Suppose you have reached out to a vampire, and
he’s agreed to be interviewed by you.
What kind of questions do you ask him?
Here’s some that I’d use.
I’ve
heard that vampires are immortal, so how old are you? Which if the anti-vampire devices really
work, and which are just urban myths?
I’m thinking of things like wooden stakes, garlic, a crucifix, etc. Who, or what, transformed you into a
vampire? Have you turned anyone into a
vampire? Do you really bite people in
the neck and drink their blood? Do you
sleep in a coffin during daylight hours?
These questions all get
asked, and answered, in Interview With the Vampire. And when the vampire is several centuries
old, some fascinating life stories emerge from those queries.
But perhaps the most important question looks in the other direction.
What
are you planning to do with the rest of your vampiric life?
What’s To Like...
Interview With the
Vampire, Anne Rice’s breakthrough novel, is divided into four parts, and
is written, naturally, in the form of a transcription from an interview recorded on a tape
cassette (well, the book was written in the mid-1970s) by an unnamed interviewer and a vampire named Louis. The book eschews
chapters and is divided into four parts.
Briefly:
Part
1 is set in New Orleans and deals with Louis’s “turning” and
learning to be a vampire.
Part
2 describes a trip to eastern Europe to the “roots” of vampirism.
Part
3 chronicles Louis’s stay in Paris where he learns to socialize with fellow
vampires.
Part
4 finishes up with Louis’s return to New Orleans and his path
forward.
This book was my introduction
to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles
series, and thus, I was surprised that the vampire being interviewed was not
the more-famous Lestat. But he
does play a prominent part in the story, along with a couple other major
characters: Claudia, Madeleine, Armand, and Santiago. Some of these die along the way, although
that’s a somewhat nebulous term with regards to immortal creatures.
Although there are parts of Interview
With the Vampire that involve neck-biting, bloodsucking, and other
action-driven thrills, it is mainly a character-driven storyline. Louis, Lestat, and the reader all will ask
themselves: how well would I be able to deal with being able to live forever, when it's at the cost of needing a frequent supply of blood as nourishment and
knowing that the world around me will change and modernize at an uncomfortable
pace whether I want it to or not.
I loved the “feel” of the
world in the 1790s. New Orleans for that
time-period came alive for me, so did the portrayal of Transylvania and Paris
in that era. It was fun to take in a
play at the Parisian "Theatre des Vampires", and the mention of penny-dreadfuls was a neat
detail.
The ending was good, with a
nice twist at the interview’s end that I didn’t see coming. There was a sense of “completeness” to this Louis/Lestat tale, but also an encouragement to “now on to the next
episode”.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.5/5
based on 8,036 ratings and 1,118 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.02/5 based on 584,731
ratings and 15,946 reviews
Kewlest New Word ...
Tignon (n.) : a piece of cloth worn as a turban
headdress by Creole women in Louisiana.
Excerpts...
“But he did believe in possession by the
devil.”
“That is a much more mundane idea,” said
the vampire immediately. “People who
cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.” (loc. 188)
“And then strange things began to happen, for
though she said little and was the chubby, round-fingered child still, I’d find
her tucked in the arm of my chair reading the work of Aristotle or Boethius or
a new novel just come over the Atlantic.
Or pecking out the music of Mozart we’d only heard the night before with
an infallible ear and a concentration that made her ghostly as she sat there
hour after hour discovering the music̶─the melody, then the
bass, and finally bringing it together.
Claudia was mystery. It was not
possible to know what she knew or did not know.
And to watch her kill was chilling." (loc. 1566)
Kindle Details…
The e-book version of Interview With The Vampire goes for $8.99
right now. Amazon and Wikipedia consider
The Vampire Chronicles to be a
13-book series, with all those e-books priced in the $8.99-$11.99
range. However, in the back of the
e-book itself a 30-book series is listed in detail.
“She is
perfect. Mad; but for these days that is
perfect.” (loc.
4460)
There’s not a lot to grouse
about in Interview With the Vampire. I admit that Part 1 dragged a bit for me,
until I realized that it was going to be an in-depth character study and not a “Bela Lugosi” type of horror-adventure. Happily, things events started rolling nicely in Part 2, and continued that
way through the rest of the book.
There is some profanity, but
that was expected and I counted only 10 instances in the first 25% of the
e-book.
The biggest challenge was
getting used to the proper, but somewhat complex, punctuation of a transcribed
interview. Almost everything was a
direct quote recorded on the cassette tape (the exceptions being brief
interludes detailing the actions of the interviewer), and when those were
direct dialogue by Louis or some other character, both single- and
double-quotation marks piled up at the start of each paragraph. It was grammatically correct, but distracting nonetheless.
Overall, I enjoyed Interview
With the Vampire, which was a pleasant surprise since I tend to prefer rock-‘em-sock-‘em thriller
storylines more than character studies. Kudos to Anne Rice for penning a book in the
latter genre that kept even me interested in the struggles of Louis, Lestat,
Claudia, and the other vampires to maintain their sanity and cope in a world
that will now both fears and hates them.
8 Stars. A quick tip gleaned from the book, should you ever be accosted by a vampire in a dark alley late at night. Don’t pull out your crucifix and point it at them, expecting them to vaporize. It amuses them and makes them chuckle as they kill you.
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