Read This!: Interview with the Vampire

By Anne Rice

Challenge: Vampires

So this is Mr.’s favorite book and I have successfully avoided it (although I have seen the movie) for years, but when the vampire challenge came up, I went for it.

Interview with the Vampire is told by Louis (lou-ee not lou-is as he is Creole), a 200 year-old vampire.  In the late 18^th century, Louis, disenchanted with life, falls into the hands of the vampire Lestat and thus becomes a vampire.  Even though they have a contentious relationship, Louis and Lestat remain together for years, adding another vampire, a child, Claudia, to the mix.  Claudia, adult in mind but still a child in body, and Louis, always pensive, have many questions about the origins of vampirism, what they actually are, etc. etc. etc. but Lestat, a bit of a jackass, won’t give up any information.  This stalemate leads to a series of events which have catastrophic consequences.  

I confess I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would.  I became interested in learning more about Lestat in particular and ended up reading Wikipedia to get some more info.  Yes, I could read the other books in the Vampire Chronicles of which Interview is the first but Mr. seems to think I won’t be into them because they aren’t as good as this book. 

Louis is Mr.’s favorite vampire and has a penchant for over-analyzing and philosophizing and thinking, constantly, to where I was like, “Get it together Louis!  Stop obsessing!  Quit being such a wet blanket!”  This is why Mr. likes him, for all of his thought and introspection.  And this is where Mr. and I differ.  Case in point, this movie was playing on TV while I was in the midst of reading the book so I decided to have the movie on while I read the book simultaneously.  It had been awhile since I had seen it but (semi-spoiler) I died over Lestat’s comment about Louis whining at the end.  That wasn’t in the book but it was awesome.

I’ll end with Louis’ constant battle within himself over whether he is good or bad makes me wonder if Anne Rice meant this as kind of a philosophical work.  What makes a person bad?  Are you bad because everyone is telling you you are bad and so you think you are or is it your nature?