Book Review
Title: Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles #1)
Author: Anne Rice
Genre: Paranormal/Horror
Rating: *****
Review: I have read Interview with the Vampire a few times before but never continued on with the series despite owning The Vampire Lestat and I’ve decided 2021 is the year I am going to finish a lot of the series I have started but I couldn’t resist rereading this one on audio. Upon starting this book again, I was stunned by the audio narrator’s voice and how it immediately sucked you into the story as we are introduced to our narrator, Louis de Pointe du Lac, a vampire, and former plantation owner as he begins to recount his life to a young man, Daniel Molloy. Daniel doesn’t believe Louis at first but quickly realises that he couldn’t be making up the things he is speaking of. This first portion of the novel seeks to introduce to our protagonists and let us get to know them a little. Louis experiences a lot of changes early on in the novel going from a proud young man to a broken one after the death of his brother Paul. This is where Lestat finds him and he drains Louis but neither kills him or changes him and Louis is left to suffer for a while before Lestat comes for him and even then, he isn’t changed immediately almost as if Lestat is testing him. Soon after his change Louis realises two things in very close succession, the first is that he doesn’t like Lestat de Lioncourt at all and the second is despite believing there wasn’t much Lestat could teach him the fear of the unknown kept them bound together which Lestat takes full advantage of. Even very early on in his new life Louis could see there was a huge difference between the vampire he is and the vampire Lestat is. The most notable instance is Louis has a great respect for the new life and sees everything even killing as a wonderous moment to be savoured whereas Lestat treats as something to be over and done with as soon as possible which causes quite a lot of tension between the pair.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we follow Louis and Lestat for some time as they live on the plantation as Louis tries to figure out everything, he needs to know about being a vampire without much help from his supposed teacher. However, there are several conflicts between the pair during this time that come in the form of a young man running a neighbouring plantation who Lestat decides he wants but Louis knows that if the boy dies then his family will perish with him and tries his hardest to prevent this. While he isn’t able to achieve this, he spends a long time providing council to the eldest sister, Babette so that she can provide for her family in the absence of her brother which would have been unheard of for the time period and everything begins to settle down again. However, as time passes the slaves on the plantation who are very superstitious soon realises that neither Louis or Lestat are human and are planning their destruction. In the wake of this Lestat just wants to kill the slaves but Louis wants to leave instead creating just another impasse between the pair. This decision is taken out of their hands as Lestat’s father is dying and when a slave comes to the house and sees what I presume are Lestat’s fangs, he panics which means Louis has to kill him. Louis doesn’t do this in the conventional way as he has been surviving of animal blood so he stabs the boy, however, both men know that other slaves will coming looking for him and when they do the whole plantation descends into chaos. Louis making sure they can return sets fire to the house and they are forced to take shelter at the neighbouring plantation as dawn is approaching. As Louis has been providing Babette with council, they have developed a slight friendship between them and she gives them shelter but even she is suspicious of them after hearing tales from the slaves. When she confronts Louis about it, he tries to appeal to her reminding her of the council he gave her but as she is afraid, she lashes out setting Louis on fire which would have killed him if it weren’t for Lestat saving him. The pair make it to New Orleans getting money from under one of the many aliases Louis has acquired but his thirst gets the better of him and he ends up drinking from a five year old girl whose mother has been killed by the plague, only to then be taunted by Lestat leading to a physical fight between the pair before they head off to sleep. When he awakes the next evening, Louis finds that Lestat has brought two women to their room intending on killing them which enrages Louis but he does nothing as Lestat drains the one woman without her companion knowing before turning to the second.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Lestat kills the second woman but not before frightening her into hysterics which Louis doesn’t understand. Here Lestat confesses that he enjoys killing and the fear he instils in others which is something Louis has never enjoyed and yet he is drawn back to the moment when he fed on the small child and Lestat seems to recognise this in him. Lestat finds out that the little girl was found and taken to a hospital where she still lives and goes to collect her as the doctors believe he is her father due to their similar appearances and returns with her and Louis to the hotel. Louis wants to know why Lestat has taken the girl and he explains in an impassioned speech everything that Louis felt when he fed from her and why he felt that way and even convinces Louis to finish the job despite how horrified he had been at himself before. Louis complies but before he can kill Claudia as Lestat calls her, he takes her from Louis and changes her before Louis even figures out what Lestat is doing. He does this for the sole purpose of keeping Louis with him as he wants to protect Claudia more than anything in the world and he very quickly comes to love her and for years the trio exist quite happily together but then things begin to change. Louis doesn’t notice it as first but he realises that while Claudia’s body doesn’t age her mind does and now, she is a woman trapped in the body of a child. When she kills two of their servants Lestat believes she has gone too far as their relationship has been breaking down as the years went by but it is Claudia who confronts them about who made her.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Lestat doesn’t tell Claudia anything she wants to know and it falls to Louis to tell her that he drained her of life and that Lestat gave it back to her which for a moment seems to have broken the relationship the pair have spent decades building but both know to lose the other would only cause them heartbreak and pain so they put it behind them. However, Claudia is planning to kill Lestat because he won’t tell them anything and he has nothing to offer them but yet he keeps them hostage unwilling to let them leave. When Claudia tells Louis of her plan, he is against it and tries everything he can’t to dissuade Claudia from her goal but she won’t be reasoned with. As time passes Louis is hopeful that Claudia has moved on from it but he knows in his heart that this isn’t true. During this time Lestat had become friendly with a human boy, a musician and even hints that he plans on turning this boy into a vampire and that’s when Louis suddenly realises that this is the night that Claudia plans to kill Lestat and he finds himself unable to do anything to prevent it even though he has the power to. As Claudia presents Lestat with two drugged boys no older than seven as a peace offering Lestat greedily takes one of them only to be overcome by the drugs in the boy’s blood. As he desperately calls for Louis’ help, Louis watches as Claudia proceeds to stab Lestat and bite him. The pair watch in horror as Lestat body seems to deflate into a corpse and they waste no time in disposing of Lestat and the boys before making their final preparations to leave for Europe. However, on the night they are to leave Claudia is followed home by the musician and Louis realises that he has become a vampire when he hears Lestat’s footsteps climbing up to their flat and both are terrified. Louis is prepared to defend Claudia with his life and takes on Lestat while Claudia deals with the boy, Lestat in his weakened state still proves a challenge for Louis but with Claudia’s help they manage to escape the now burning apartment to the boat that is to take them away from Lestat. For now they are free but Louis is sure that Lestat and the boy survived the fire and eventually he will come looking for them and this weighs heavily on his mind even if Claudia has immediately put it behind here.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, Louis and Claudia travel across Europe looking for others of their kind throughout Transylvania and Hungary and Bulgaria but they are disappointed as they don’t find vampire like themselves but vampire that are animated, mindless corpses. In one village in particular they get to witness this first hand and have to fight the creature as it seeks only to protect its meal and nothing else. Louis is left with the feeling that they might have destroyed the only other vampire like themselves in Lestat and that he was perhaps right about there being some secret to the way vampires are created but Claudia shuns this. However, she does still ask why Louis can’t make other vampires forgetting that Louis still holds on to so much of his humanity that he would be unable to pull on the ruthlessness and callousness that Lestat did when he created both Louis and Claudia but it is a thought that plagues her daily. After what seems like months of the travelling, they are close to Vienna and Louis wants to go directly to Paris where he feels some connected to home as he himself is French and he also has the feeling that there they might find what they have been searching for. They don’t seem to find any vampires in Paris for a time and Louis can sense Claudia’s growing anger and discontent and desperately wants to do something about it. As luck would have it that night Louis runs into not one but two vampires like himself, the first he calls only trickster as he seems to mimic Louis’ actions and when the pair come to blows a third vampire steps between them sending the trickster off into the night. That vampire is called Armand and he gives Louis an invitation to the Theatre of Vampires and requests that he brings Claudia along and they do. There they witness a play where a young girl is killed by death but Louis and Claudia are the only ones in the audience that know the whole cast bar the young girl are vampires and their killing her was entirely real yet no one notices this. After the performance Armand comes from them, leading them down into the underground space where he and the other vampires dwell and Louis knows he is going to get the answers he has been looking for.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Armand leads them down to where 15 vampires are living himself included but they also have a mass of human guards, servants, and people they feed off without killing. Armand feeds both Louis and Claudia before speaking to them in private and Louis realises that there was no knowledge for him to seek but in Armand, he has found a kindred spirit and feels a love from him he has never felt, the only thing that comes close is his love for Claudia. Armand claims he is the oldest vampire in the world at 400 years old and Louis is inclined to believe him but this poses a problem since the other vampires are suspicious of them and Armand warns them to say nothing of their origin presumably already aware that they killed their creator, Lestat which has broken the only law known to their kind and the punishment for that is death. When they leave Claudia is shaken as she knows Armand wants Louis for himself but she can’t be without Louis due to her helpless form and so she goes out in search of someone to replace Louis. Claudia returns with Madeleine and she wants Louis to change her into a vampire and while he initially refuses, he knows that he can’t stay with Claudia forever as their hatred for each other has been growing but he also knows he can’t leave her alone which is why he ultimately gives in to her request but unknown to him other know of Claudia’s crime in killing Lestat and they will be coming after her very soon in order to kill her. I have to admit that following Louis as a character has been an amazing experience and I am a little anxious that we won’t get to see more of him in future books since the ending of this book in particular has left me with many questions on previous readings.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, I came to realises that Claudia’s death wasn’t the saddest moment in this book as that happens in the background unlike in the movie. The saddest moment for be was watching Louis truly lose the last of his humanity and both Armand and Lestat’s sorrow when they realises that they were the ones that truly made Louis the cold, callous being that he is today and wanting to return to a time when it wasn’t so and being unable to do so. This whole book is one long look at humanity and what it means to truly be human at our core and honestly the ending where Daniel asks for immortality brought me to tears as we witness Louis minute bout of rage before giving into the demand because he truly doesn’t care what happens to the boy before disappearing just before the dawn while Daniel makes plans to seek Lestat out in New Orleans where Louis had seen him last many years before. While Louis is my favourite character in the series next to Armand, I was excited to see what happened to Lestat between the last time Louis saw him frightened of the ever changing world and completely alone to where he starts at the beginning of the sequel. Overall, Interview with the Vampire is a very thought provoking novel forcing the reader to examine what they would have done in Louis’ place and I can say many of us would have made the same decisions for the very same reasons and seeing where Louis ends up at the end of the novel makes it even more heart-breaking for the reader to realises that Louis was right, no matter the choices he made he would have ended up in the same position in the end.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk
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