Anne Rice

I have been a fan of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles ever since I picked up Interview with the Vampire in 1999. I was living in New York at the time, and I went to Barnes & Noble on 51st & Lexington (in the CitiCorp Building), and came across the series. Even though I hadn’t read any of the novels, by this point I had seen the movie, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and a scene-stealing Kirsten Dunst. I really enjoyed it (and still do), so I thought I’d give the series a try. I proceeded to read all of the volumes then in print, and then bought each new book on day of release.

I didn’t think the first novel was perfect, and I found the fact that it was written as a conversation slightly strange – I was young and not very well-read or refined at the time. Nevertheless, it planted the seed that has had me eagerly await any new book by Anne Rice ever since. I consider the first two sequels, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, as one of my five favourite novels of all time (I can’t read one without immediately reading the next, so I consider them as a single book).

Time to get to the point of the post: I have also been reviewing books for almost seven years, and movies and music for a few years more than that. I therefore found this post on Anne Rice’s Facebook feed, attached to a link, rather interesting:

Interview with the Vampire was actually a flop when it was published, severely hurt by a negative New York Times review by Leo Braudy. I’m not sure a review can kill a book today. But this was 1976, a different world. And a first novel, especially a very unusual one, was I think tragically vulnerable to the power of the Times… Now 37 years later Interview is (I’m grateful to say) an unqualified success and is still in print in hardcover as well as in paperback…

Sadly, the review is behind the New York Times pay-wall (which I still couldn’t read, despite supposedly having access to a specific number of articles per month…). Nevertheless, and perhaps a little strangely, Barnes & Noble’s listing for the book has the following quotation from Leo Braudy, apparently from “Books of the Century, The New York Times, May, 1976”:

“Anne Rice’s publishers mention the Collector and the Other, but it is really The Exorcist to which Interview with the Vampire should be compared, and both novelist William Peter Blatty and filmmaker William Friedkin, whatever their faults did it much better… The publicity tells us Rice is a ‘dazzling storyteller.’ But there is no story here, only a series of sometimes effective but always essentially static tableaus out of Roger Corman films, and some self-conscious soliloquizing out of Spider-Man comics, all wrapped in a ballooning, pompous language.”

I thought it was interesting that Rice said she’s “not sure a review can kill a book today”. I think she’s probably right. Not only is the internet allowing critiques, criticism and praise to spread all over the world, but also the fact that negative reviews only seem to generate extra interest in books. Take two (admittedly unusual) examples: 50 Shades of Grey, or Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (which got, effectively, a bad review from the Vatican = publisher’s Holy Grail).

I also think Braudy is wrong his statement that “there is no story” in the novel. There’s quite a lot, actually. Yes, it’s “static”: it’s a book-length interview. What was he expecting? I don’t understand the Spider-Man connection, but it stands out, no? I don’t know the other references he presents, so I can’t speak to those. The connection to The Exorcist is an interesting one, but I don’t know either the book or movie version of that story well enough.

I’m sure this would have been a more interesting post if I’d had access to the review, but there we go [and if I hadn’t been writing it during a bout of insomnia, at 3:30am]. I’ll keep trying to get the text, and see if it adds anything to the discussion. Or, at the very least, offer some interesting quotations from it as/when I find them.

What do you think? Can negative reviews kill books today? If not, why not?

After reinventing the Vampire for modern literature, Anne Rice turns her attentions to Werewolf mythology with great success

MAN OR MONSTER?

After a brutal attack Reuben finds himself changing. His hair is longer, his skin is more sensitive and her can hear things he never could before.

Now he must confront the beast within him or lose himself completely.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before on the site, but Anne Rice is one of my favourite authors. Reading the Vampire Chronicles was a turning point in my life as a reader, and indeed set me on the path that turned me into as voracious a reader as I am today. The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned have been re-read so many times, I almost know them off by heart. It was with great interest, therefore, that I started reading The Wolf Gift – after redefining vampire fiction with her novels, I was really interested to see what Rice could do with that other supernatural mainstay, the werewolf. What she’s come up with is pretty great.

As the story opens, our protagonist, Reuben, has been sent by the San Francisco Observer to write a piece about the uncertain future of the giant house at Nideck Point. He quickly falls in love with the grand mansion, and also a little with the elegant heiress, Marchent Nideck. It is a chance encounter between two unlikely people, one that leads to a magical evening that ends in a brutal and bloody attack. Stumbling about in the dark house, Reuben is bitten by an unseen beast. As dawn breaks, he is whisked to a San Francisco hospital (his mother is a leading surgeon, luckily). Kept under observation, Reuben starts undergoing a terrifying yet seductive transformation. His family and doctors are confounded by his recuperation and apparently-altered state.

Reuben’s transformation quickens after he leaves the hospital, and he soon assumes – temporarily each night – a savage, wolfen aspect. Strangely (and this is something that really set The Wolf Gift apart from Rice’s contemporary authors dabbling in werewolf fiction), in this were-state, Reuben develops the ability to sniff out, literally, evil. What follows is Reuben’s attempt to reconcile the beast component of his new gift and his apparent drive to do good. After the attack at Nideck Point, his editor assigns him the job of writing about each new “Man Wolf” attack and sighting. His nightly activities have San Franciscans and, eventually, others much further afield, enthralled: a Wulfen Super-Hero? Who has heard of such a thing? In addition, Reuben, with the help of a new ally and love-interest, attempts to find out more about his progenitors and his specie’s history. What is the connection with the mansion? How many others like him are there, prowling the night?

The story is fast-paced, and is nigh-impossible to put down. I really loved the overall pacing. Specifically, the fact that Reuben’s change isn’t sudden, nor is it particularly dramatic. He retains his humanity and mental faculties, and experiences heightened senses overall. He retains his personality, power of speech and so forth. I am particularly happy that Rice doesn’t have him turn into some over-sexed, cavorting, hirsute boy-toy.

As with the author’s vampire series, there is a sensual/sexual component to Reuben’s new state, but it is more a general pleasure at his new aspect and abilities, coupled with a near-orgasmic feeling that overcomes him during the change. It’s easy for a non-fan to poke fun at the current state of vampire and werewolf fiction, and the tendency for authors to, effectively, introduce these beasties into stories that are little more than Mills & Boon with supernatural overtones. Thankfully, Rice does not do this, and once again shows just how much can be done with these classic horror-creatures. This is a highly-original take on the werewolf mythology, and is as atmospheric and engrossing as her previous novels.

I’ve never really been able to put my finger on what it is, specifically, about Rice’s writing style and stories that hooks me so completely. The author’s prose is always expertly crafted, very fluid and her characters are always three-dimensional and stand-out examples of whatever type they have to be. The cast of The Wolf Gift is no exception. Reuben, his family, Laura, Felix et al, are all interesting, three-dimensional characters.

The Wolf Gift really offers a great reinterpretation of the werewolf myth: it’s very Rice-ian, in that it has far more nuance and grounding in mysterious, supernatural history. In fact, I think I only have one niggle with the novel, and that is that I think the book could have been longer. Rice’s descriptive passages were more sparse than I have come to expect from the author.

An interesting break with the norm for ‘origin’ stories, is that instead of front-loading the novel with history and bringing us up-to-date, Rice makes us wait, building up the narrative nicely to a very philosophical ‘history’ at the end. I think I would have preferred more history, but that comes from a deep, abiding affection for the author’s Vampire Chronicles and the historical portions of those tales. Whether Lois’s, Lestat’s, Marius’s, or Enkil & Akasha’s histories, they remain some of my all-time favourite passages – I have yet to find an author who can write the past as seductively and atmospherically as Rice.

It would be no exaggeration to say that the Vampire Chronicles marked a huge turning point in my reading (tastes and habits – never before did I spend hours on end, and days at a time reading one author’s books). And, multiple reads later, they are novels that have lived up to my fond memories.

Where Rice’s vampires were largely loners, or only tolerable of company for shorter periods of time, her werewolves are inherently pack animals. How Reuben straddles his past life and his new one is very nicely done. Her other characters find themselves in similar situations. The way they handle Reuben’s changes are also interesting: his surgeon mother, struggling to make sense of test results (or lack thereof), unable to understand what’s happening to her “Sunshine Boy”. His priest brother, whom he confides in, struggling to place Reuben’s new aspect within his belief system. Only one character’s interactions with Reuben were a little difficult to accept: Laura’s acceptance from first sight never rang true for me – I think I know what Rice was aiming for, but it needed more time to develop, in my humble opinion. Laura’s arrival in the novel was… surprising, and in the hands of any other author, that relationship would have likely been a disaster of poorly-written “erotic” supernatural bestiality. Stuart’s addition to the story was also rather sudden, and I think his part in the story, and rather rapid introduction, could have done with some better integration.

The Wolf Gift is a perfect example of how supernatural fiction does not have to be Mills & Boon With Beasties. Rice isn’t trying to make us comfortable, and Reuben’s bestial side is vividly portrayed. His vigilante acts are brutal and bloody. Rice really knows how to show-and-not-tell, though, which only makes her novels that much better than so very many of her contemporaries. (Much of what happens is obvious, but the “sex” scenes are very short, and non-graphic, and often off-screen).

Overall, this is a great novel. This is an interesting new set of characters, and I really hope we get to read more about them and the history of these werewolves.

Highly recommended.

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For more on Anne Rice’s novels, be sure to visit her website, her Facebook page, and follow her on Twitter. For Friday’s Arrow Books competition, visit their Facebook page.