Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Chronicles series, Book 1
Anne Rice
Knopf
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Classics, Diversity, Religious and Spiritual Themes, Urban Tales, Vampires and the Undead
**
Description
A chance encounter leads a young reporter to the story of a lifetime, when the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac offers to tell the boy the tale of his life. From a childhood in France to his days overseeing the family indigo plantation in colonial New Orleans, thence his fateful encounter with the dangerous vampire Lestat who turns him, this is the story of Louis struggling to come to grips with what it means to be a creature of blood and darkness, and whether it is possible to hold onto one's humanity beyond the bounds of mortality.
Review
First published in 1976, this book is an icon of modern gothic horror and vampire fiction, inspiration for
innumerable writers, basis for several adaptations. It does not, unfortunately, hold up that well today, at
least not to this reader.
It starts with an interesting framing device, as the vampire sits down with the young and unnamed reporter in
an empty room. Initially skeptical, the "boy" soon realizes that he is in the presence of a genuine creature of
the night - a fact he finds both terrifying and tempting, as what starts as the recording of Louis's memories
becomes an obsession to know more about vampires. Most of the tale, though, is Louis relating his own life (and
afterlife) story... and this is one of the problems. For all that Rice evokes many great sensory details and
paints vivid, atmospheric settings through Louis's narration, the character himself has all the initiative and
willpower of a tapeworm, perpetually locked in brooding inaction and morally tangled indecisiveness as he's led
around by his companions, often in directions he finds abhorrent but which he is utterly incapable of resisting.
It is likely a deliberate echo of older gothic classics that were big on atmosphere and detail and brooding and
not necessarily big on proactive main characters, but it's a style I've always found irritating, particularly
when I don't care at all for the narrator I'm stuck with. Finding Louis in a state of deep brooding guilt over
the death of his devout brother, the vampire Lestat has little difficulty taking control of the man's existence,
becoming his master and teacher in the ways of vampirism. Again, Rice weaves together pieces of vampire lore
with her own imagination for an intriguing take on the iconic monsters - they have no vulnerability to garlic
or religious iconography, but can be killed by sunlight or fire or dismemberment, and other talents seem to
develop randomly in individual vampires according to their personal nature - that extends to their psychology,
which becomes its own form of damnation even in the absence of any actual proof of divine or diabolical
influences. Louis's inherent curiosity drives him to ask questions that Lestat won't or can't answer, but he
remains under the master's thumb for far too long before attempting to find answers on his own... and then only
when he finds a new master to take over and lead him where he wants to go.
Here is where the rating really took its nosedive. The new master is Claudia, a five-year-old girl he finds by
the deathbed of her plague victim mother whom Lestat turns to vampirism so they can become a "family". The
vampire relationships all have erotic overtones, for all that the only penetration involved is of the fangs (a
theme that goes back well before even the iconic vampire Dracula in fiction), and Rice spares no words
elaborating on how the young child-turned-monster is included in this, how Louis's love for her transcends any
pseudo-parental bond (as does hers for him). Her growing frustrations at being a child with ultimately adult
lusts (as all vampiric lusts are adult in nature) become a driver of her character's increased depravity and
manipulation of the infatuated Louis, in ways that ooze utterly repulsive vibes through frequent, lurid
descriptions of Claudia. I darned near gave up on this one because it was so unpleasant to wade through, but
kept going because I was expecting, or rather hoping, that the twisted pedophilic fever would at some point
break. Skirting spoilers, it does not... but it says something when even a child (if a child turned into a
vampire) has more drive and conviction and plans than a grown man several decades her senior who can only
trail along helplessly in her wake.
There are some truly beautiful and heartbreaking moments and passages, and some ideas explored in interesting
ways. But those are more than outweighed by the snail's pacing of the plot, the unlikable narrator, and the
repugnant vibes, plus an ending that feels less like a conclusion than a narrator running out of steam (if
with a slight, dark twist at the end of the novel itself).