Book Review: Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK OR YOU DON’T MIND SPOILERS.

I have been waiting too long to review this book, but now I can finally review it! Yay!

Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice exceeded expectations for me (in a good way that is) when I read it. I’m not even sure where to start with what I liked about it, and I couldn’t find a decent book summary without it giving away too many spoilers, so I will put it into three sentences.

1. A reporter sits down with an interview with a vampire named Louis, who is our main character.
2. Louis tells the reporter about his life, from when he became a vampire up to now basically.
3. The reporter is so fascinated by Louis’ life story of being a vampire that he wants Louis to MAKE HIM INTO A VAMPIRE, which was what Louis was basically warning against all along, and Louis is so furious at this that he knocks out the reporter and then kicks the reporter out of the building.

At least, that’s what I could basically summarize the whole book as in three sentences.

Let’s start with the three main characters:

1. Louis. Our main character, once turned into a vampire it’s obvious that he has incredible struggle within him concerning the life of a vampire versus his past life as a human and all those human morals that go with it. Whenever he submits to his vampiric nature to feed, all human morals of ‘do not kill’ and such tend to go out the window, and my perception of Louis is that he fears losing his humanity, and continues struggling with it throughout the entire book. No matter how beautiful or interesting he sees things through the lens of a vampire’s life, there is still the lack of moral value that vampires seem to lack compared to humans, and that is what truly creeps him out. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him because of his struggle of his humanity versus his…uh…vampirity? Oh, I’ll just call it vampire nature so it doesn’t get confusing. Though I think the word ‘vampirity’ has a good ring to it.

2. Lestat. I hated him so much. Mainly because he was such a manipulative snake towards Louis for approximately ninety percent of the time he was in the book. But he was so good at playing at Louis’ poor inner struggles of his humanity versus the acquired vampire nature so much that I can’t help but give him a kudos for being so good at manipulating people. I don’t think he was supposed to be liked in this book, if anything, but I actually didn’t mind the fact that he kept being so mean to Louis throughout majority of the book. In fact, if anything, I feel that his role was to show Louis the dark side of himself through the vampiric nature he acquired, as the vampire nature within basically any vampire seems to reflect a darker side of humanity, where morals are bit more loose and things become more utilitarian in their view rather than humanity’s supposed deontologist side, especially when it comes to killing people to drink their blood from.

3. Claudia. Transforming from innocent little girl to cold-hearted, mature-in-mind-but-not-in-body morbid person was rather interesting to read in the book. She still retained her childlike, innocent appearance but her mind matured, which makes her a rather interesting chracter, especially once she starts realizing that she’s not going to age at all and she’ll never become a mature-looking young woman, which obviously irks her as her body therefore doesn’t fit with who she is inside, and she grieves because of that. It’s an interesting contrast to others in real life who might wish to be young again, but reading of Claudia’s reactions to her forever-young body makes me wonder if wanting to be young forever can come with some curses.

These were the three characters that stuck out the most for me, honestly. Armand? Madeliene? Nah—Claudia, Lestat and Louis totally stole the show here, and rightfully so since they are the main characters. Besides that, though, they’re rather captivating characters to read about. I couldn’t help but get swept up in Louis’ angst over the struggle of inner humanity versus the vampire nature, Lestat tempting him to give into such nature, and Claudia just wanting to literally grow up so bad and then channeling her anger straight at Louis and Lestat for making her this way.

I heard previously before picking up the book that Louis and Lestat apparently have/had some sort of intimate relationship between them. I was able to catch small hints of such a relationship between them throughout the book, but otherwise not much else. I haven’t read the rest of the books in the series yet, but I do hope that does get expanded upon as the parts I was able to catch hints of were actually interesting to read, such as when Lestat and Louis first sleep in a coffin together (yes, they actually did).

Usually I’m not a huge fan of books that fluctuate from past events and then to present events, but I liked the way the transition from past to present worked with this book. Because it was Louis telling the story to the reporter, the writing made it obvious to tell us when we’re staring into Louis’ past to “we’re back to the present for a quick second” and I liked how the writing made those transitions clear cut enough for me to understand.

Overall, 5 out of 5 stars. I just have to give it a full score because of how interesting it was when it explored a few possible themes—the vampiric nature easily representing the darker side of humanity, the backlash of eternal youth in Claudia’s case, and good character development for Claudia and Louis especially. If you haven’t read this book yet, please do! It’s one vampire book that I definitely would recommend.