Interview with the Vampire
Ratings547
Average rating3.8
Rating: 3.9 leaves out of 5
Characters:3.5/5
Cover: 5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Genre: Horror/Vampire/Gothic/Fiction
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yes
When I first stepped into Anne Rice's vampires I was a child and watching the movies. Needless to say I don't remember much from the movie enough to do side by side either way the book was enjoyable for the most part but there were some very sketch moments.
I really enjoyed the lovers aspect of Lestat and Louis, that was a plus. The thing that really threw me off was Claudia. The way she was written made me... kind of sick. Some parts made Claudia seem more like a lover, even says so a few times. She is a child, a literal body of a 5 year old, and where I get Louis was talking about how she was like a daughter to him it was still put in the strangest of ways.Needless to say I can't say Anne doesn't have some marbles loose, because to write that part you have to be.
I read this book once before, when I was about eleven years old, and I remember being utterly entranced by Lestat, Louis, and the whole entire cast. I've always been fascinated with vampires as whole, and the beautiful discussion of morality and mortality here just caught me up. Suffice it say, I was a little afraid to read this for a second time. Would it hold up to what I remembered?
Let me say, the audiobook version of this is a little ponderous but I kind of enjoyed it for that. The narrator perfectly captures Louis' ennui. I was spellbound while listening and, even though I'd heard the story before, still deeply affected by the trials that poor Louis had to face. I don't know if we're ever actually meant to like Lestat, but I did find myself understanding him a bit more this time around. It was nice to see this book with fresh, more cultured eyes. The fact that I loved it just as I did the first time was simply a bonus.
Despite any qualms I may have with Anne Rice now, you can't deny that this book is essentially a classic in the vampire genre. I'm happy to have experienced it again.
I had never read the book before despite having in my books shelf for over 4 years. And I personally love the movie.
After finally picking it up and I couldn't stop reading it. I must say that I really enjoyed as much if not more then the movie. It paints a better picture than the movie! The book is a clear winner and i now understand why Anne Rice became so popularas she did!
Weird, existential, unsettling, and absolutely captivating. Couldn’t put it down. Can’t wait to read TVL.
God did not live in this church; these statues gave an image to nothingness . . . Loneliness. Loneliness to the point of madness.
Finally finished with this! Sometimes I'm ashamed that certain books take me so long to read, but life gets in the way I guess. Anne Rice lost her daughter when she was about to turn 6. In this book, the vampire Claudia is turned when she is about 6, and most of the story revolves around her. Rice has said it was her unintentional way of coping, when she'd lost faith in the church and all. Reading Interview with the Vampire in this light is a dramatically different experience than if you read it without context, I assume. It makes everything so much more tragic, the gentle feeling of loss that flows through every page, whether it's Louis's loss of his own human life or the connections he'd made with other vampires, etc. Claudia is the crux of it all, and it's heartbreaking.
I enjoyed the book a lot more towards the end, the middle was a little slow! Really it's a 3.5 star but half-stars don't exist here, so, 3.
3 1/2 stars.
This would be better if it embraced queerness rather than portraying it in a perversive light, if Claudia and Louis had been strictly father and daughter, and if the characters had been more diverse. Not every vampire is white and/or European!
Just watch the show if you want gay vampires :-)
Lowkey incredible. I get the hype. The way that Anne Rice wrote about misery is almost beautiful. The way how vampires talk with each other and humans is so foreign and doesn't make sense with human morality and just the thought of that is insane. There's a lot of little nuances that are really cool. I loved the book.
This was pure gothic-vampire horror but presented in a way the characters all had human emotions and interpersonal problems. The imagery used throughout the entire story is very descriptive and detailed. The tone of the story is dark, creepy, gothic and sensual.
This is a book about the kind of vampires who slowly erode over the centuries, whose humanity gently withers and dies, whose good intentions gradually give way to the monster inside. It's a story about the battle with hunger, and how on a long enough timeline, the hunger always wins.
It's a book about immortality. Scouring off the glimmering sheen that lies in the ideal of living forever, and exploring the crushing reality of a life unending. Watching everything you knew, the world in which you grew up, washed away one decade at a time. Watching all the things you knew and love wither and fade, while you remain, changeless and deathless, with only the monster inside you for company. It takes the romance of vampirism, an ideal that so many people are in love with, and strips it back to the ugly, parasitic truth.
Anne Rice's writing flows gently across the page, establishing each scene and how it feels. The melancholy, violence, anger, and other intense emotions that play across the book's pages are all displayed beautifully.
god this was ROUGH. i definitely liked some parts of it but overall i kinda dreaded reading it like i feel like louis kind of lost himself at the end and maybe that says something about me not understanding the nature of being a vampire blah blah idc
I read this about a year ago and DNF page 68. But I decided I'd try it again and get rid of it off my shelf. I can not believe I didn't like it then because it is just so good to me now. I love the “TNOTW” style writing (even though this came out 40 year before TNOTW came out) where the narrator is just telling his story, and boy can Anne Rice spin a yarn. I thought the book was going to be exactly like the movie and for the most part it was but the last third of the book really goes it's own way and I think I like Rice's version better although I do appreciate the movie as well. Rice has captivated me to at least read the next book in series
I read this for my first time ever in anticipation of the show and really enjoyed it! It was unlike what I expected, though I can't really articulate what I expected, and I enjoyed it. Going in with virtually no spoilers, I was very much along for every twist and turn.
I read the first half of this book two autumns ago, got into a reading slump, and didn't pick it back up until now. Perfect, coincidental timing for the AMC show adaptation of it!
Definitely had some sections that felt like they dragged on, but I loved the vampire ennui of it all. Plus the character dynamic reminded me of NBC Hannibal.
Es una obra maestra. La le?? cuando iba al instituto y me encant??. La he vuelto a leer m??s de 20 a??os despu??s y me ha vuelto a encantar.
So i have loved the movie ever since i was a kid and decided to read the novel just to see for myself how much Anne had changed in the movie and i want to read all the novels in this series and i decided to start the day i did because of the passing of Anne Rice.
I have to say that i actually loved this novel. Was it the best masterpiece i've ever read before? No, but it wasn't that far off either in my opinion. It's hard to explain exactly what it was that captivated me when reading this book. I have to say that i was a bit surprised about how much the movie actually deviated from the original book, but it made me love it more.
The characters are very interesting, at times horrific, but at the same time so relatable. It's very fascinating, but at the same time heartbreaking when knowing what the inspiration for Claudia was. In my opinion this book is very beautiful and scenic, making me excited for reading the rest of them.
I've seen the movie adaptation a few times and read the Finnish translation of this book over 15 years ago. It was a great pleasure to get back to this story and get reminded about how much deeper in the character development the book actually gets. Now, I want to know more about these characters so I'll have to put the rest of the books in this series on my “To Read” list.
Super meh.
I kept zoning out while reading this. It started off well enough, but by a fifth of the way through I just did not give a shit. But, I'd made it to the point where I figured I should keep on.
Read it through my flight to Florida. Thought things were looking up when they were meeting the revenants, then on to Paris, then back to zoning the heck out.
Couldn't bring myself to care about Claudia. Honestly thought the book was just trashy enough I wasn't sure how the Claudia thing was going to pan out.
3.5 stars
I buddy read this book with a group on Instagram back in October. I did end up liking this, but I was expecting to enjoy it more than I did. Don't get me wrong overall I did enjoy it but there were some things that bothered me that I just couldn't overlook. This might be slightly spoilery so if you haven't read this book yet you might want to skip this review. First of this book is told in an interview format which was fine for me for the most part but every time he stopped telling the story and started talking to the person he was telling the story to it took me out of the story. That happened all throughout the book. Louis was one of the main characters and he was probably my favorite character, but his constant brooding got annoying. The relationship between Louise and Claudia was weird at times to read. Nothing actually ever happens between the two characters but the way it was written made it sound kind of sexual and given that Claudia was a child it was just weird to read at times. I'm not sure if that was how it was meant to come off but to me it did. Other than that I really enjoyed it. I ended up being more into toward the end because a lot started happening. I would be interested in continuing on with the series but I'm not in any hurry to pick up the next book.
Truly, truly sensational. I've seen several people refer to this as boring or monotonous but I disagree completely. I was enthralled, struggled to put it down completely bewitched by Louis' life, death and afterlife (?). Rice's character building is fantastic, her portrayal of Claudia the ancient child vampire was superb, chilling and wicked. The only thing I didn't like was knowing I have finished this masterpiece. Can't wait to move throughout this series and discover more and more of these wonderfully evil characters and I pray that I may meet Louis again.
It is an interesting story.
But it feels a bit... weak. I don't really get an idea of any of the characters. They are kind of created to be very attractive, but I'm not attracted to any of them.
The interviewing boy... uh.
There are some very nice bits, and it was entertaining read. I wasn't bored.
But Stephenie Meyer most definitely was very much influenced by this. A lot.
Après avoir enfin lu le Dracula de Bram Stoker, je me suis décidé à lire une autre oeuvre emblématique du mythe vampirique : Interview with the Vampire, de l'écrivaine américaine Anne Rice.
Outre son succès auprès des lecteurs, ce roman est également connu pour son adaptation sortie au cinéma en 1994, avec Brad Pitt et Tom Cruise dans les rôles principaux.
Le titre nous renseigne d'abord sur un point : nous allons lire un entretien avec un vampire. Enregistré par un jeune journaliste à la fin du XX° siècle, le récit du vampire prénommé Louis nous fait découvrir le mythe du vampire revisité par Anne Rice.
Louis est né en Louisiane à la fin du XVIII° siècle, il avait une vingtaine d'années quand il a été attaqué et transformé en vampire par Lestat, avec qui il va partager sa vie pendant de longues décennies malgré leurs différences de personnalité. Lestat est sans scrupule, sans foi, là où Louis doute, culpabilise, s'interroge sur l'origine des vampires, refuse sa condition de tueur sanguinaire.
Quand Lestat vampirise une jeune fillette, le duo devient un drôle de trio, avec les deux “pères” d'une vampire qui ne ne grandit pas, condamnée à garder son corps d'enfant. Les aventures de Louis vont ensuite l'amener en Europe centrale, puis à Paris, où sa vie va changer à nouveau.
Ce qui traverse ce livre du début à la fin, c'est la quête de Louis pour comprendre le bien et le mal et sa place dans le monde. C'est aussi l'histoire d'une relation complexe entre Louis et son “maître” Lestat, comme entre un fils et un père qui ne se comprennent pas.
J'ai tendance à considérer ce livre comme celui qui a donné naissance au mythe moderne du vampire, en le rajeunissant et en le remettant au goût du jour, à l'époque où le roman est sorti en tout cas, c'est-à-dire au coeur des années 1970.
Il y a des passages passionnants dans ce roman, d'autres un peu moins, mais j'ai pris du plaisir à le relire. Je crois même que j'ai plus apprécié cette seconde lecture que la première. Suffisamment en tout cas pour me donner envie de lui les romans suivants des Vampire Chronicles d'Anne Rice.
Ya know, honestly this book wasn't awful but it there best. I felt HYPE to finally read it after seeing the movie so many years ago with Tom cruise and Brad Pitt as well as Kristen dunst and Antonio banderas. Loved the movie. Lol Louis has got to be the most boring vamp ever. I listened to this and found myself completely zoning on his long monologues about good and evil, etc. The beginnings were always good but this dude needs a psychotherapist. Will I ever get around to reading the others