Dracula visits

She’s been avoiding this classic for 20 years. Finally, it gets her, and in the dead of night, too.

I HAVE, on a number of occasions, attempted to read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The first occasion was when I was a university freshman. It was one of the 10 titles from which I had to choose five to read in a semester. I avoided it for odd reasons. I might have found it too daunting and opted for Jane Austen’s instead. I was dead wrong. If I had read it, I would have enjoyed it immensely. The bleak Midwestern American winter of my student days would have been the best setting for a book equally dreary.