Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

"John Utterson is the main character in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is a lawyer and a friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll is a scientist who, while searching for a way to separate his good self from his bad impulses, creates a potion that transforms himself into a man without a conscience."

There’s a reason this novella has stood the test of time - it is creepy and interesting as hell. I think there’s something very terrifying to me about the idea of losing humanity and sanity, at first due to your own choices but later because of forces you cannot control. Robert Louis Stevenson allegedly wrote this while on drugs, and you can definitely feel that experience in the book. 

Structurally, the novella crams, stuffs and presses a complete, fully-fleshed story in its scant 88 pages by using a brilliant combo of point of view changes, dialogue, flashback and epistolary components. In lesser hands, the amount of information and story contained in this tale would have required a lot more paper. In addition to being a model of conciseness, the change in style, in my opinion, added to the enjoyment of the story by allowing the reader to be more “present” during the narrative.

Content-wise, Stevenson really knocks the cover off the ball. Despite being written in 1886, this tale still stands as the quintessential fictional examination of the duality of man’s nature and the very human struggle between the civilized and primal aspects of our beings. The constrained, repressive society of the Victorian Period in which the story takes place provides the perfect back drop for the model of outward English propriety, Dr. Henry Jekyll, to battle (metaphorically and literally) the darker, baser but still very human desires personified in the person of Edward Hyde. What a perfect allegory between the face people wear in public and the one they take out only in private.

This is such a short book and I don’t know quite what else to say, but guys... I love Victorian horror. It's so fucking weird and wild and all about Transgressing Social Norms and Being Subversive and this is the kind of shit I am HERE for!! I know that the whole story is supposed to be some deep philosophical look at the duality of human nature.
While that is extremely interesting, that wasn't what really interested me.
No, what kept me going was trying to figure out what the hell kind of kink this mild-mannered old fart was into! Seriously.
He developed a freaking magic serum just so he could run around and do...WHAT?! What was so off the charts freaky that he'd need to transform into a different person to get away with it?
But, unfortunately, Stevenson never gives us a straight answer. He just decided to skip over the juicy bits and ratchet up the tension with the with the whole Good vs Evil thing.

Overall a true classic that was the starting base for many philosophical debates and literary trends.

Age Rating 12+. Nothing untoward but a few creepy moments.