Interview With the Vampire

Written by Anne Rice and made into a film starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, and Antonio Banderas, Interview With the Vampire is a verbose reading challenge: divided into four parts and unencumbered by chapters, but ultimately a more vivid and brutal look at the vampire world, a world that’s nature was only hinted at by Bram Stoker. 

In a small room sits a boy with a tape recorder, waiting for the story to start. Across from him sits Louis, a vampire, eager to tell his life story. As Louis regales, mystifies, and terrifies the boy with his story of death, murder, doomed love, betrayal, and never-ending loneliness, he conveys the trials, tribulations, and indeed curse that come with immortality. 

I am in two minds about this book. On the one hand, my reading it was flawed because I had seen the film first and that affected the way I perceived the happenings of the book. I also dived right into reading Interview With the Vampire literally after finishing The Shining and the two styles of writing are as different as they come, therefore it took me an inordinate amount of time to really come to grips with the writing, let alone enjoy it. I personally found this book really hard to read. 

Written in the first person, obviously as it’s an interview of one’s life, I found it to be almost unbearably verbose and decadently written. In quite a number of places I found myself just reading blindly and not being able to really take in what was being said, what was happening, what feeling was being conveyed, something I accredit to the book’s being incredibly wordy. 

On the other hand, there were a number of things that I admired about this book. The fact that it is not divided into chapters fits with Rice’s verbose style of writing, providing it with a sooth and unencumbered free-flowing current. 

I also too admire the vampire world that Rice has created. When you think about it, vampires are the most beautiful and coveted mythical creatures in the world, and yet they are the most miserable and unsatisfied creatures ever! The entire story of Louis’ vampire life is written in rich language, which imprints vivid images on the mind and makes the reader see the world the way vampires, in particular Louis, see the world. Although the entire thing is dark and brooding and really not all that nice, the free-flowing, decadent language with its violence and its intimacy are both repulsive and compelling, redefining the myths and tales surrounding vampires and moulding them into a book that speaks to and entices a modern audience. It’s a significant piece of fiction for that alone. 

Filled with death, murder, betrayal, love, violence, and a foreboding sense of doom, Interview With the Vampire is a good book, but unfortunately one that I found rather challenging and a little too wordy. The stories and the images that it creates are superb, but there is something about the free-flowing way that it’s written that makes the events and the words become one sluggish blur, sometimes incoherent.