Review: Interview With The Vampire – Anne Rice

The Vampire Chronicles #1

SYNOPSIS: Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a 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. – via Goodreads

I must admit, I liked this far more when I was younger. Maybe it was typically because as a teen we are all trying to find ourselves and a place to fit it, we are all so angsty. However, reading it again did not thrill me so much, but this was one of the books that was a little more difficult to get into because of how it is told. It was annoying for me to read it as this long ongoing monologue basically, every now and then flipping back to the fact that the story is being told to some reporter. In a sense I suppose it all comes full circle by the end. Also, there are a lot of flawed aspects to it, like the relationship between Louis and Lestat never really means anything. At all. The book had plenty to make you damn uncomfortable though. I mean, when Claudia was killed, she was a child. Itty bitty. That’s something, but not the pinnacle of the nastiness at all. To refer to her, Claudia, a child, as sensuous before she was even turned or lived for so many years, and later as a lover was highly disturbing. Maybe after those sixty five years it starts to make more sense, but from where it was, not so good. Not so great. I understand that this was written shortly after the death of her own young daughter, and some of this was understandable, such as Claudia’s issues with never aging and always being “a doll”, but there were other places where it was downright disturbing. I was incredibly excited when Armand was brought in, as he always was my favourite vampire. Something that also never made sense to me with this book (it was not the first that I read) was the total misrepresentation of Lestat. He is not at all in any of the other books as he was described here. I also got annoyed by how Louis would drift away into pointless soliloquy of the beauty around him. There were strong undertones of homo-eroticism throughout the novel, and Louis was such a negative, depressed Nelly ever. I am not a real fan of emos, and this was just one of those “over the line” instances for me. Ugh. But at least nothing sparkled here, and things are a little darker in here, which is why I enjoyed these books so much when I was younger. Apparently I do need to reread these, seeing as this was a total shock to my system upon re-examining it. The book is not particularly gripping (again I state most likely because I have found myself in between all these years) and it’s really slow. It just doesn’t flow perfectly and pull you in. This does not mean it is a terrible book, it’s an alright read, just nothing to write home about. I am so scared I get to the rest of the books and they all disappoint me like this again… ugh, I will have to sell them all, though it took me years to collect