Interview With the Vampire (Vampire Chronicles, volume 1) by Anne Rice

[james_davis_nicoll]

Can anyone pity poor, unfortunate immortal vampire Louis as much as poor, unfortunate immortal vampire Louis pities himself? Louis plans to find out.

Interview With the Vampire (Vampire Chronicles, volume 1) by Anne Rice

Comments

[hippogriff13]

I read it back in the day, too. Aside from the problematical addition of Claudia to Louis and Lestat's little family, I don't recall that much of the stuff James discussed in his review. I'd somehow managed to forget about both Lestat's brilliant idea of using the slaves on Louis' plantation as a food source and the slave uprising this led to. Although I do remember an odd interlude in which Rice presented Louis as a sort of antebellum proto-feminist who attempted to help the human heiress to a neighboring plantation maintain control of her estate and the business decisions regarding it, only to have her ultimately crack under the pressure of society's disapproval of such gender-inappropriate behavior. I believe she actually went mad, or at least wound up being committed to an insane asylum (not necessarily the same thing when it came to nineteenth century women who allegedly behaved inappropriately).

If I remember correctly, the novel ended with Louis disappearing and the reporter vowing to track him--or some other vampire--down in order to get turned into a vampire himself. Considering what an angstfest Louis' account of his life (unlife?) so far had been, I found this decision pretty baffling.