Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice Summary and Reviews

	List Price: $14.95 Our Price: $8.09 You Save: $6.86 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.11 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions

Book Reviews of Interview with the Vampire

Book Review: The exquisite classic that rejuvenated the vampire genre
Summary: 5 Stars

This first novel in The Vampire Chronicles centers around four very different yet almost equally fascinating vampires. The story is that of Louis, a wealthy eighteenth century Louisiana plantation owner who became a vampire in the depths of his despair over his brother's suicide. Lestat, the inscrutable force that hovers above every page of the tale, made Louis a vampire for basically economic reasons; he wanted the wealth that Louis possessed, but he also wanted a companion. Narcissistic and vain, the dapper Lestat does not teach his creation what it means to be a vampire, does not share the secrets he claims to know, does not even help Louis through the soul-shattering change that comes about when the body dies so that it may live eternally. Louis stays with Lestat only because, so far as he knows, there are no other vampires to whom he can turn for help and instruction. His distaste for Lestat grows over the years, however, and in order to keep Louis by his side, Lestat takes a young girl whom Louis had fed upon during a period of emotional turbulence and makes of her a vampire, knowing that Louis could never abandon the child. It is the story of Claudia, doomed to a most tragic life of immortality trapped inside the body of a little girl, that makes this book so powerful in my eyes. Lestat is of course fascinating, Louis is the epitome of tragedy and a fountain of knowledge by way of his questioning, eternally sad nature, but Claudia's story is an unbearably exquisite one. She accepts her vampire nature with some ease, being too young to really ever remember her human childhood, but the growth of Claudia the vampire woman inside the body of Claudia the child is a beautifully painful thing to watch. When she manages to separate Louis and herself from Lestat to go searching for other vampires in Central Europe and eventually Paris, giving dramatic voice to both her love for and hatred of Louis, the door to the dungeons of utter tragedy are thrown asunder. The introduction of the four hundred year old vampire Armand in the second half of the book gives us yet another unique vampire soul to ponder, but Armand at his most vivid pales in comparison to Claudia at her most unprepossessing.

In the end, we are left with Louis and his story, which is full of unanswerable questions. Even the meaning and lesson he tries to express about his miserable existence utterly fail in their influence it has upon the boy chosen to hear his extraordinary story. Literature really provides no better character study of the emotional meaning of vampirism than Louis, however. He became a creature of the night only out of despair, and his development as a new creature on earth proceeded without any instruction whatsoever from the cold Lestat. Thus, he questions everything about his new nature, desperately longing for a mentor. He does not relish the taking of human life, and the thought of creating another creature like himself is anathema to him. He sees vampirism as a curse, eternally wondering if he is indeed a child of Satan doomed to an immortal yet cursed life. The source of his moral suffering is his inability to really give up his human nature, and this causes him a long, long life of torment and pain. Never before had the moral, spiritual, and philosophical nature of the vampire been explored in such depth as that found in this exquisitely beautiful novel, and that is one of the primary reasons why it rivals Stoker in terms of its beauty and resonates with an emotionally hypnotic power that is unmatched in the long tradition of vampire literature.

Book Review: A comfortable read with a life of its own.
Summary: 5 Stars

Currently I've only read one book, and I ate that up immediately. Rice's writing is awe-inspiring, so beautifully done that every moment, every scene flows gracefully into the next. Her descriptions are so vivid that the books are films in themselves, and when I took the occasional break to eat, it was like I'd pressed pause on my television and the film was waiting for me to return to.

Although I already knew generally what was going to happen throughout the book, due to the fact that I'd already seen the movie, it still managed to keep me intrigued. I now understand why people believe the movie to be a pale comparison to the book - it's not because the movie was poorly done, but because it wasn't possible to achieve the same effects on the movie. The characters have so many dimensions that it would be near impossible to show them all on the big screen. For example - though hinted at in the movie, Louis and Claudia's relationship - their connection - far exceeds a human one, and this is only made obvious by the books. Logically, the big screen has limitations - human limitations, while the books exceed those limits and venture into the unlimited universe of vampires. You can only reach that place through the books.

I loved this book, most definitely. I highly recommend it to those who loved the movies, and those that are longing to read something fresh - something that has broken apart the clich?s of the vampire myth and added its own magic and its own appeal. The philosophy and logic within this book far exceeds human thought and in a strange, surreal sort of way, everything Anne Rice speaks of makes sense, and at the same time, makes no sense at all. Mind-boggling but simple. Perfect.

Book Review: A comfortable read with a life of its own.
Summary: 5 Stars

Currently I've only read one book, and I ate that up immediately. Rice's writing is awe-inspiring, so beautifully done that every moment, every scene flows gracefully into the next. Her descriptions are so vivid that the books are films in themselves, and when I took the occasional break to eat, it was like I'd pressed pause on my television and the film was waiting for me to return to.

Although I already knew generally what was going to happen throughout the book, due to the fact that I'd already seen the movie, it still managed to keep me intrigued. I now understand why people believe the movie to be a pale comparison to the book - it's not because the movie was poorly done, but because it wasn't possible to achieve the same effects on the movie. The characters have so many dimensions that it would be near impossible to show them all on the big screen. For example - though hinted at in the movie, Louis and Claudia's relationship - their connection - far exceeds a human one, and this is only made obvious by the books. Logically, the big screen has limitations - human limitations, while the books exceed past those limits and ventures into the unlimited universe of vampires. You can only reach that place through the books.

I loved this book, most definitely. I highly recommend it to those who loved the movies, and those that are longing to read something fresh - something that has broken apart the clich?s of the vampire myth and added its own magic and its own appeal. The philosophy and logic within this book far exceeds human thought and in a strange, surreal sort of way, everything Anne Rice speaks of makes sense, and at the same time, makes no sense at all. Mind-boggling but simple. Perfect.

Book Review: Very moving
Summary: 4 Stars

Book Review: Fiction becomes fact
Summary: 5 Stars