The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

Reading Challenge Category: A book outside your (genre) comfort zone

Official Blurb:

Dr. Henry Jekyll, fascinated by the dichotomy of good and evil, no longer wants to inhibit his dark side. He concocts a potion to create the alter ego of Mr. Edward Hyde. With the burden of evil placed on Hyde, Jekyll can now take pleasure in his immoral, nefarious fantasies—free of conscience and guilt. It’s when Hyde turns to murder that Jekyll realizes how monstrous his impulses are and how hard they are to suppress.

My Thoughts:

I’m not a big fan of ‘classics’. So I thought I’d read one of the oldies I’d never read but knew the tale for the reading challenge category ‘a book outside your (genre) comfort zone’.
This certainly reminded me of why I don’t like classics and especially not old books. You could tell it was written a long time ago from the hysteria of the men over the simplest of things. Every book I have ever read from this era has been the same; men running around hysterical over nothing. Half the time, I didn’t know what was going on, how they had come to the conclusions that they had, nor how one scene had become another. There are no segues you are expected just to keep up with the nonsense.
This book is only 66 pages long (another reason I chose this one, so I didn’t have to suffer for too long) but it felt like a 500-page tome! It just dragged on and on, and I think the only bit worth reading was the final chapter when you get answers to what was happening, but even this was disorientating and hard to follow.
It was a good job I knew the general take of Jekyll and Hyde before going in as I don’t think I would have had a clue on finishing it what it was really about or what had happened.
So, another classic ticked off my list and another reminder of why I dislike them.

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