I think the statute of limitations has passed, so I can talk about it now: Why I, as a high school student, was able to finish reading the original Dracula

First, let's emphasize this.

When it comes to "masterpieces of 19th-century British literature," there are many, from Dickens to Lewis Carroll to Conan Doyle, but

Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is also a masterpiece of a novel that is incredibly interesting and loses to none of them!

Despite that, unless you are a real horror novel enthusiast,

it is rare to find someone who says, "Dracula? Of course, I've read the original novel properly!" (Perhaps even for a real horror novel enthusiast, those who have finished Dracula might be somewhat rare).

Why is it rare?

I know why.

For those accustomed to modern horror novels, the original Dracula is a bit too slow-paced and tedious.

Not only that, but this work takes the form of a pseudo-documentary, where the entire content is made up of "quotes from letters, diaries, and memos" of the characters. This style is also hard to get into... the narrator's character and writing style change from chapter to chapter, which is likely a point of frustration (those who read from the first chapter will think Jonathan Harker is the protagonist, but he exits early, and the narrator shifts to Mina, Lucy, Professor Van Helsing, and others. In between, medical records of a mental patient named Renfield, who seems unrelated to the main plot (though you realize much, much later that he is a key person), appear as "documents," which honestly tries to break the reader's concentration lol).

But!

Let me speak from my own experience of reading this work in high school,

from around the time Lucy dies, the story becomes a rush of intense developments, and literally, you become unable to stop until the end, gripping your hands in sweat, thinking, "And then? What happens next? What kind of things will happen next?"

Even so, I am the one who finished reading such a great classic in high school, but

if you ask why I, at that age, with many other hobbies, was able to get so hooked on reading "Dracula",

it's nothing special... actually, one day in high school, something very unpleasant and sad happened, and the next day, I felt mentally distressed... well, I feigned illness to my parents to get the day off school, and on that day, I read it in bed lol

I'm talking about it now because I think the statute of limitations has passed.

However, as I was somewhat serious back then, even though I had feigned illness, once I had said "I'm taking the day off because I'm not feeling well," I felt I couldn't just get up and play video games, so I stayed in bed all day, but...

I wasn't particularly sleepy, so

I took out "Dracula" from my bag, which I had happened to borrow from the library but had given up on after reading about 30 pages a few days earlier, thinking, "It's too long and I can't finish it!" and started reading it.

Well, thanks to the constraint that I had resigned myself to staying quietly in bed all day, my reading progressed tremendously,

I reached around the part where Lucy dies,

and before I knew it, I was completely drawn into the world of the story,

and just like that, I finished reading it with incredible momentum. The second half was a speed-reading pace fueled by intense concentration.

So, what happened with school? Having read Dracula and feeling my heart race with the thought, 'I can't believe such an interesting novel existed!',

I somehow started feeling better, and from the next day on, I was able to go back to school lol.Well, looking back now, when I talk about my high school days, people are surprised, saying, 'It's amazing you didn't become a school refuser after being put through all that!', so it seems my high school days were pretty crazy, but that's a story for another time.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who was able to overcome a difficult period in their youth by encountering interesting literature. However, in my case, the subject of that 'passionate reading experience in my teens' was,

not Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima, Natsume Soseki, Camus, or Goethe, but Bram Stoker's Dracula, which, looking back now, feels just like me.

Anyway, that was a bit of a digression,

but let me emphasize once more,

Dracula, written in England at the end of the 19th century, has a style that is difficult for modern readers to get into, but if you can endure that and push through, it is undoubtedly one of the greatest entertainment novels in the history of popular literature! I want horror fans to try reading the original at least once, and for those who love the city of London itself, I think you will be fascinated by the detailed descriptions of 19th-century London life and scenery in this work! Book lovers, please give it a try!

※Postscript: For those who say, 'I'm interested in the original Dracula, but it's too long and hard to read' even after I've said all this lol, I have no choice but to recommend Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula as a version of the film that conveys the atmosphere of the original well. It's a shame that the ending is different from the original, but other than that, the story is exactly the same, the 'Dracula's Castle' set is amazing, the cast is super luxurious, and above all, the vampire hunting scene in Lucy's tomb, with the shadows of the vampire swaying in the dim lighting, is scary, beautiful, and full of gothic sensibility, making it one of the best scenes in the history of horror movies...