Girl on Book Action: Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
ISBN: 0-345-33766-2

Blurb:

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force – a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

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Aside:  Here I am, concluding our trilogy of Interview with the Vampire related reviews.  Please to enjoy.


My Thoughts:

If I were you, I’d be wondering why I would use that terrible blurb. Well, my little poppets, let me explain. I wanted to show you how utterly bad it is. I mean, it’s really nothing more than a whole bunch of nouns strung together that could be applied to almost any book, because it tells you absolutely nothing about this novel aside from it being about a vampire’s confessions and that it’s written by Anna Rice. All of that other stuff is useless fluff.

What is going to be difficult about writing this review is that I’m very familiar with the movie, which I like – it’s the kind of period piece that really appeals to me with the costumes and sets. I’m a sucker for those, really. I will, however, make a concerted effort to avoid discussing any comparison between the book and movie. You can find that sort of thing anywhere, after all.

Right then, I suppose some of you might be aghast that I’m studying vampires and this was the first time that I’ve read Interview with the Vampire. I just never felt compelled to read Anne Rice’s stuff, and if that loses me goth-girl creds, I guess I just have to live with that. I spent the teen years others devoted to the Vampire Chronicles to pining for Poppy Z. Brite novels (that I had a hard time finding in the suburban cookie-cutter jungle) and reading the early Anita Blake books (which gives me back some cred-points, at least the PZB does).

Lets move on to the actual review, shall we? The first thing I want to say is that there is some lazy writing in here, for example, a lot of times when there could have been an action sequence what we actually got was “what happened next was swift and confused.” Now, for the first while this didn’t bother me, but it happened often enough that I noticed it – you can only get away with so much. Rather than give the impression that vampires have super-human speed and that humans are incapable of perceiving the precise actions of a vampire with their human sight, it came off as Rice not wanting to think about the actual choreography of the scene. Lazy.

The plot was okay. I think at this point we’re so inundated with vampire stories that whatever was remarkable about this novel is old news. Louis was annoying for the most part and his inability to make decisions grated on my nerves. What he needed was to grow a backbone and stop simpering after one person or another while whining about how lonely he was all the time. I’m all for expressing loneliness or what have you and the strange predicament of an immortal life, but with him it was always “Lestat isn’t what I want him to be, I don’t want to hang out with him anymore,” and then a few chapters later, “Oh I miss Lestat, I never appreciated him.” Blah blah blah. Learn to live with your decisions and don’t let a five year old with a temper-tantrum problem run your life. Or do, just don’t complain about it later. Ugh, he was so painfully passive.

I did enjoy the part in Eastern Europe – I thought that was fairly well-done. And I liked the Paris vampires, too, even though I suppose you’re not supposed to like them. At the risk if spoiling part of a book that was published in 1976, what I liked about the Paris vampires was that they were what you would expect a vampire coven to be - reclusive, ridiculous, and deadly. They kill people in front of audiences and get away with it - which Louis finds repulsive (of course). What you're supposed to see in them is something grotesque and obsolete compared to the modern, beautiful Louis. Given my feelings about Louis, I much preferred these Paris vampires, except for Armand, who was little better than whiny-fang, err... Louis.

Now, I know I just made a big hoo-ha about how much I didn't enjoy the majority of this book, but now that it's all over, I kind of maybe like it a little, I guess. Right, that's what we call "pulling a Louis." I think it might be time to read the Lestat book, and perhaps regain some sort of backbone. At least that vampire wasn't wasting eternity dithering around, avoiding all possible decisions and whining about, well, everything.