Customer Reviews

The Bloody Countess: The Atrocities of Erzsebet Bathory

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

To understand the book and many of the reviews here, one has to consider the author. Valentine Penrose was active in the Surrealist art movement and published many surrealist poems. Radcliffe and the Marquis de Sade were great influences on her writing. This book is more than a historical tale; her love of gothic prose and words is as much a character in the book as the countess. Penrose's telling of the Bloody Countess's story stands out from those of other historians because Penrose is one of the only writers to tell the story without either an overt or covert Christian interpretation of the events. So, if you want just facts without wading through lots of writing, chose another text. If you are interested in surrealist writing or want a more avant-garde look at the Countess, read Penrose's.

There's alot of fuss being made about this book. I don't particularly see anything wrong with the prose style, except that it becomes a little heavy handed in some places. The fact of the matter is that this is the only freely available work on Erzebet Bathory, and as such it is superb. I thought it highly interesting, although it could have been structured better.

What would happen if Danielle Steel tried to be Oswald Spengler? The result would be something very similar to "The Bloody Countess" - an often incomprehensible account of historical events related in prose so flowery it stands to cause migraines. Penrose's work is a garbled mess of self-consciously mysterious language; hopelessly bogged down with high-flown speech, the story of Countess Bathory becomes lost in all the Kafkaesque prattle. She moves randomly from one topic to the next, following no logical thought patterns, often obscuring her points in meaningless, poetic drivel. I read this book seeking factual information on the history of Elizabeth Bathory and came out sorely disappointed; to call it unreadable would be a kindness.

This book is not a great telling of the story of E. Bathory. However, the intertwining of family marriages and who is related to who is dizzying and intriguing. This leads one to assume that E was very much a victim of inbreeding, not to mention she was simply nuts.

Not the best book on the subject but quotes the trial at the time. There are key facts that are excluded from the book but not at anyone's fault, the powers that be at the time struck them from the official records and were destroyed. Supposedly because they were so gruesome. That sounds like interesting reading!

Get the book if you are curious of an almost too detailed description of the story. However, keep in mind that it's not the details that one really wants to read. Also, the book jumps from E to others who have had similar behaviors.

It's a bit boring but at the time I purchased it there weren't many books out there about the actual trial.

When compiling a list of the worst books ever written, this one should place somewhere near the top. I am not sure whether to blame the initial author or the translator. The prose is sometimes readable, but mostly flowery romance-novel type fare with little redeemable value. Some passages caused me real pain to read through, as filled with luxuriously long descriptions of the Countess skin and hair, facts Im sure the author cannot possible glean from portraits or contemporary records. but fictionalized to add pages to the book.

The speculation the author engages in constantly seems to be the biggest problem. The books publishers proclaim on the back cover that The Bloody Countess is a work of History/Decadence. I dont know if the History part of the description actually applies, as the book seems to be very reliant on extemporaneous guesses about individual motives and very thin on citing documents or any form of historical data. One of the most glaring and irritating flaws of this book comes from the authors constant quoting of letters and journals with single quote marks   and not explain who or where such information came from. I suspect this is because the letters are a product of the authors mind. Either way, it would be nice to see where these items came from, and where one might verify the source. Sadly, we get none of this; instead, we get minimal fact and maximum fantasy from the mind of the author.

Lack of documentation could be forgivable in a work of Historical Fiction, but for a book to get published as History and then translated without the slightest attention to research standards is unforgivable. Even in an undergraduate paper one expects sources to be properly cited and acknowledged. This book seems to be using the based on a true story method of citation so common for television and movies, which is simply deplorable in a work of serious history.

More than anything, while reading The Bloody Countess I felt as if the author were trying to stretch 30 pages worth of (bad, undocumented) material into a 200-page book. This book is sloppy, pedestrian, and a complete waste of time, beyond being poorly written and painful to read.

I was lucky enough to grab a first print from ebay. Great read and great detail of Elizabeth Bathory's story. The re-print was in my hands at one time but was stolen from me. I was extremely satisfied with this book and it is probably the best and only real accounts of her trial and her life. If you can find it get it!

This has got to be the most poorly written book I've ever read. Unnecessarily flowerly prose makes much of the work incomprehensible, and what is understandable is loaded with minute detail about things that add absolutely nothing to the story or our understanding of it's subject. A totally unrelated chapter devoted to the crimes of Giles de Raiis only adds to the confusion. Try instead, the fictional "Blood Countess." It's far more readable and there's probably enough fact in the mix to give readers the overview they won't find here.

a quick interesting read,its too bad there isnt more available about this bizzare subject.

I haven't read something this poorly written since Christian Jacq's 'Ramses - Son of Light'. I attributed the thin, 2-dimensional prose to an inept translation from French to English. Could this be the same reason? It is quite bad.

Elizabet Bathory was believed to be the most beautiful noblewoman in the land, and she believed that drinking the blood of young virgins and bathing in it (as well as using it for cosmetic purposes) would make her stay young and beautiful forever. Indeed, her witch-hag servants assured her of this "fact." Over 650 young women paid with their lives to satisfy the wicked woman's sadistic cruelty and vanity before she was finally stopped. I was distracted by the writing style of this book. I think the style is either too old-fashioned and overwrought, or badly translated, I don't know which. It lacks the kind of clear and straightforward narrative base I like to see both in fiction and non-fiction. However, this is the first book about Countess Bathory which I've read, so I have nothing to compare it to. I'll read other books about this disturbing and fascinating woman in the future. I'm also planning a trip to Slovakia to visit the castle where she lived and where all of her horrible crimes were committed.

David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"