Hyde

The countdown to Christmas is coming! The end is nigh!

Following the trend I have been on for a classic with a modern sequel or spin-off, I read Hyde. I like Daniel Levine’s approach and style to this. Hyde is told from Mr. Hyde’s point of view, starting from well before his first appearance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and ending at the same point where Jekyll’s long time friend Utterson and butler Poole storm his lab. If you have not read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is a classic by Robert Louis Stevenson about a Dr. Jekyll who struggles with another personality named Mr. Hyde that comes forth through self-medication. My last post talks about this book. 

As I have said, I like the author’s approach to Hyde. You see Hyde’s side of the downward progression of dominant personalities and, at least in my reading experience, you want to sympathize with him. Throughout the book, I had to have mental arguments of whether Hyde was the victim, or if it was self induced from arrogance. Hyde presents himself as someone who clearly does not understand societal norms and etiquette, and yet has no care for it and continues to live as such. He takes up an underage lover who brings her own traumas, a result of both looking for peace and ripples of happiness in the form of each other. He thinks he is doing right all the way to the end, and fights hard to not resolve to extreme or violent measures, but as the book went along Hyde became more and more unhinged, I began to see cracks in his reality and began to feel like the people around him- suspicious. A big credit to Levine in that regard. He does a great job of introducing the right amount of characters to keep pushing the story forward without bogging it down.

I like that Hyde answers a lot of questions that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde left for me. You see Dr. Jekyll’s backstory, which is pretty major in explaining why he is the way he is. Jekyll’s profession backstory also plays into a trope I do not see often in books: letting your personal and professional lives mix to a point of obsession and the base of your decision making. His upbringing became his professional life which became his personal life. You see his relationships with other original characters be fleshed out; I built a bigger appreciation for those key people in his life, especially Poole. He cares a lot for Jekyll and his intuition is applaudable.

I think in this case overall, this contemporary counterpart strengthens the story. I enjoyed reading Hyde and would recommend reading it as a partner to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If you would like your own copy you can find it here.

8/10