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Amazon.com Description: Rice turned the vampire genre on its ear with this first novel which evolved into one of the most popular series in recent history. Though the quality of the books has declined, this nonetheless is a marvelous, innovative, and literate tale of the longing for love and the search for redemption.
StrangenessAbounds’s Review: 
out of 5 ’s
This review is based on a copy of the book I bought myself – NOT the film made in 1994 starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Kirsten Dunst.
Review: This vampire craze that seems to permeate every corner of our pop culture is starting to deeply annoy me. It is difficult to look in any direction in a retail store and not spot something to do with vampires or – the series that sent this obsession with vampires into a mad tornado of squealing pre-teen girls and their mothers – the Twilight series.
But as strong as the vampire frenzy currently is, credit should not be given to Stephanie Meyer for presenting vampire fiction to us – that accolade goes to Anne Rice. Her novel Interview with the Vampire (published in 1976) laid the foundation for our modern day fascination with vampires and their “nocturnal activities.”
The novel begins with a very nervous young man settling down to interview a cool and collected vampire. The vampire – Louis – goes on to tell his life story: where he was born, who he was before he became a vampire, how he became a vampire, learning from his creator, Lestat, their survival and their creation of their “child vampire,” Claudia.
Louis also tells of his desire to find a vampire who will teach him how to live as a vampire. Not how to get along as an immortal creature – how to unite his old beliefs as a human to those he is being forced to take on as a vampire. Lestat is not a good teacher. In fact, we discover later that the only reason Lestat created Louis is because he wanted company and briefly, a place to park his dying father. Lestat converts Claudia soon after Lestat and Louis move into a flat in the city of New Orleans, and for a time, they live in relatively happy peace. However, Louis’s search for meaning in his life pushes him to go elsewhere for the truth he wants. The story comes to a head in the city of Paris where he and Claudia discover a large gathering of vampires. Louis changes as a person and finds his desired truth, but at terrific cost.
The way that Ms. Rice weaves the story of Louis’s life and the scene with the interviewer and Louis is unadulterated genius. She uses a method that is simple enough in nature, but she writes in such a way that the reader can’t easily see into her mechanism. She knows exactly when to stop Louis’s story and return to the present, and also when to drag out a particular scene to create tension.
Rice also uses word choice and sentence structure to deepen mystery, create more tension, and allow the reader to formulate their own opinions about Louis, Lestat and Claudia. On top of that, Rice knows how to draw in her readers and shock them – even today’s readers. Rice managed to confront several taboos that continue to be disconcerting even today. The scene with the village in Scotland was terrifying in a manner that few books can match. She also slips in several hints of homosexuality (I doubt that’s shocking to anyone in this generation, but at the time Interview was written, was still considered highly deviant), pedophilia, and necrophilia the single freakiest scene (in the opinion of this humble reader) was the near-death and creation of Claudia.
Rice’s vampires require a different passage into their immortal lives than Meyer’s vampires. A person – any person, no matter their age – must be virtually sucked dry of their human blood and nearly dead before the other vampire can give them vampire blood via mouth to convert them. In the story, Claudia is a five-year old child and is permanently fixed to look as a five-year old when she is converted into a vampire. Mentally, however, she is a grown woman – a severe tension is created as she struggles to come to terms with this state of disparity.
Her story begins when Louis discovers her and in an act of severe hunger, tries to feed on her and doesn’t quite kill her. Lestat arrives and reproaches Louis, then turns Claudia into a vampire. It was this entire scene that made me say, “Wow.” There are some things that are uncomfortable to read about being done to a child, especially a young one.
Of course, there are many more instances of “Wow” than I can’t discuss here. If you haven’t read the novel (is there anyone who hasn’t?), I would be loathe to ruin those discoveries for you.
Oddly enough, I never felt an attachment to any of the characters. I didn’t care if a main character died or was mistreated or was taken out of the plot. There was just never an element that made me sympathize or want to fight for anyone. Perhaps this is exactly what Rice meant to do – after all, this is just after she renounced the Catholic Church and proclaimed herself to be an atheist. Perhaps she meant to give the reader the role of an unfeeling God looking down into Louis’s life without compassion or care.
On the other hand, having read part of her Violin published in 1997, I think that Ms. Rice feels a certain detachment from her characters and this is why she’s unable to attach her readers to those characters. There seems to be an unmistakable message in both novels that says, “You get to decide how to feel about these characters.”
I give this book four and a half stars out of five because while Ms. Rice’s writing style is lyrical, compelling and creates appropriate tension, the lack of attach-able characters offset her addictive work. Despite this one drawback, I would recommend the novel to anyone who wants to know what lyrical writing feels like and how to emulate that style. That, and Interview is a classic.
