Thursday, January 23, 2014

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This book is short, reads well and appears on school reading lists so will undoubtedly continue to be popular for some time. I see few references to a previously addressed book by James Hogg but the similarities are obvious.  Ian Rankin stated he has attempted to make Rebus a Jekyll and Hyde character to some degree and makes references Hogg's Justified Sinner in the very opening of The Black Book to make it easy for the reader.  Edinburgh itself may be a Jekyll and Hyde city with the popular imagination being one and Rankin's view being the other.  Will any of these works survive the test of time or will the Book Wraith claim them all as his own?

1 comment:

Annehueser said...

I want to contribute to thwarting the book wraith's effort to take James Hogg into the mist forever. Robert Louis Stevenson I am less concerned about. As you said, he's still read in school.