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Interview with the Vampire [Mass Market Paperback]

Anne Rice
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (709 customer reviews)

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More from Anne Rice
Whether imagining a world of vampires or recreating the life of Jesus Christ, Anne Rice is known for her innovative and compelling bestsellers. Visit Amazon's Anne Rice Page.

Book Description

September 13, 1991 Vampire Chronicles (Book 1)
Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force–a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

Frequently Bought Together

Interview with the Vampire + The Vampire Lestat (Vampire Chronicles, Book II) + The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, No. 3)
Price for all three: $21.57

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the now-classic novel Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice refreshed the archetypal vampire myth for a late-20th-century audience. The story is ostensibly a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris. But a summary of this story bypasses the central attractions of the novel. First and foremost, the method Rice chose to tell her tale--with Louis' first-person confession to a skeptical boy--transformed the vampire from a hideous predator into a highly sympathetic, seductive, and all-too-human figure. Second, by entering the experience of an immortal character, one raised with a deep Catholic faith, Rice was able to explore profound philosophical concerns--the nature of evil, the reality of death, and the limits of human perception--in ways not possible from the perspective of a more finite narrator.

While Rice has continued to investigate history, faith, and philosophy in subsequent Vampire novels (including The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, and The Vampire Armand), Interview remains a treasured masterpiece. It is that rare work that blends a childlike fascination for the supernatural with a profound vision of the human condition. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Library Journal

Rice turned the vampire genre on its ear with this first novel (LJ 5/1/76), which evolved into one of the most popular series in recent history. Though the quality of the books has declined, this nonetheless is a marvelous, innovative, and literate tale of the longing for love and the search for redemption. This 20th-anniversary edition offers a trade-size paperback for a good price.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Edition edition (September 13, 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345337662
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345337665
  • Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (709 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Rice was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. Anne has spent more of her life in California than in New Orleans, but New Orleans is her true home and provides the back drop for many of her famous novels. The French Quarter provided the setting for her first novel, Interview with the Vampire. And her ante-bellum house in the Garden District was the fictional home of her imaginary Mayfair Witches.

She is the author of over 30 books, most recently the Toby O'Dare novels Of Love and Evil, and Angel Time; the memoir, Called Out of Darkness;and her two novels about Jesus, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. (Anne regards Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana as her best novel.)

Anne publicly broke with organized religion in July of 2010 on moral grounds, affirming her faith in God, but refusing any longer to be called "Christian." The story attracted surprising media attention, with Rice's remarks being quoted in stories all over the world.

Anne is very active on her FaceBook Fan Page and has over 745,000 followers. She answers questions every day on the page, and also posts on a variety of topics, including literature, film, music, politics, religion, and her own writings. She welcomes discussion there on numerous topics.

Her latest novel, The Wolves of Midwinter, a sequel to The Wolf Gift and part of a werewolf series set in Northern California in the present time, will be published on October 15, 2013. In these books --- The Wolf Gift Chronicles -- Anne returns to the classic monsters and themes of supernatural literature, similar to those she explored in her Vampire Chronicles, and tales of the Mayfair Witches. Her new "man wolf" hero, Reuben Golding, is a talented young man in his twenties who suddenly discovers himself in possession of werewolf powers that catapult him into the life of a comic book style super hero. How Reuben learns to control what he is, how he discovers others who possess the same mysterious "wolf gift," and how he learns to live with what he has become --- is the main focus of the series.

Her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976 and has gone on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time. She continued her saga of the Vampire Lestat in a series of books, collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles, which have had both great mainstream and cult followings.

Interview with the Vampire was made into a motion picture in 1994, directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas. Anne's novel, Feast of All Saints about the free people of color of ante-bellum New Orleans became a Showtime mini series in 2001 and is available now on dvd. The script for the mini series by John Wilder was a faithful adaptation of the novel.

Anne Rice is also the author of other novels, including The Witching Hour, Servant of the Bones, Merrick, Blackwood Farm, Blood Canticle, Violin, and Cry to Heaven. She lives in Palm Desert, California, but misses her home in New Orleans. She hopes to obtain a pied a terre in the French Quarter there some time in the near future.

Customer Reviews

I've watched the movie and now read the book. Candace Peterson  |  72 reviewers made a similar statement
The characters in the book are so well developed. BB  |  58 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
118 of 123 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
With Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice completely rejuvenated the genre which I feel to be horror's most important, primal, and soul-stirring, the legend of the vampire. I have described Richard Matheson's classic I Am Legend as the second greatest vampire novel, but I must retract that statement now. Only with a second reading have I recognized the unparalleled power, beauty, eroticism, and grace of Anne Rice's contribution to the subject. Unlike Matheson, Rice luxuriates in the Victorian appeal of Stoker's masterpiece, while taking the subject to planes far beyond those Stoker could have envisioned for his Count Dracula. The modern writer does not have to hide the vampire's erotic appeal behind convention, nor does she need to classify her subject as an evil in and of itself. The vampire nature of Rice's creation is a complex, unfathomable subject that transcends good and evil.

This first novel in The Vampire Chronicles centers around four very different yet almost equally fascinating vampires. The story is that of Louis, a wealthy eighteenth century Louisiana plantation owner who became a vampire in the depths of his despair over his brother's suicide. Lestat, the inscrutable force that hovers above every page of the tale, made Louis a vampire for basically economic reasons; he wanted the wealth that Louis possessed, but he also wanted a companion. Narcissistic and vain, the dapper Lestat does not teach his creation what it means to be a vampire, does not share the secrets he claims to know, does not even help Louis through the soul-shattering change that comes about when the body dies so that it may live eternally. Louis stays with Lestat only because, so far as he knows, there are no other vampires to whom he can turn for help and instruction. His distaste for Lestat grows over the years, however, and in order to keep Louis by his side, Lestat takes a young girl whom Louis had fed upon during a period of emotional turbulence and makes of her a vampire, knowing that Louis could never abandon the child. It is the story of Claudia, doomed to a most tragic life of immortality trapped inside the body of a little girl, that makes this book so powerful in my eyes. Lestat is of course fascinating, Louis is the epitome of tragedy and a fountain of knowledge by way of his questioning, eternally sad nature, but Claudia's story is an unbearably exquisite one. She accepts her vampire nature with some ease, being too young to really ever remember her human childhood, but the growth of Claudia the vampire woman inside the body of Claudia the child is a beautifully painful thing to watch. When she manages to separate Louis and herself from Lestat to go searching for other vampires in Central Europe and eventually Paris, giving dramatic voice to both her love for and hatred of Louis, the door to the dungeons of utter tragedy are thrown asunder. The introduction of the four hundred year old vampire Armand in the second half of the book gives us yet another unique vampire soul to ponder, but Armand at his most vivid pales in comparison to Claudia at her most unprepossessing.

In the end, we are left with Louis and his story, which is full of unanswerable questions. Even the meaning and lesson he tries to express about his miserable existence utterly fail in their influence it has upon the boy chosen to hear his extraordinary story. Literature really provides no better character study of the emotional meaning of vampirism than Louis, however. He became a creature of the night only out of despair, and his development as a new creature on earth proceeded without any instruction whatsoever from the cold Lestat. Thus, he questions everything about his new nature, desperately longing for a mentor. He does not relish the taking of human life, and the thought of creating another creature like himself is anathema to him. He sees vampirism as a curse, eternally wondering if he is indeed a child of Satan doomed to an immortal yet cursed life. The source of his moral suffering is his inability to really give up his human nature, and this causes him a long, long life of torment and pain. Never before had the moral, spiritual, and philosophical nature of the vampire been explored in such depth as that found in this exquisitely beautiful novel, and that is one of the primary reasons why it rivals Stoker in terms of its beauty and resonates with an emotionally hypnotic power that is unmatched in the long tradition of vampire literature.

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56 of 56 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my all-time favorites December 19, 2012
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Okay, so I was one of those kids in junior high school. You know the type: the teacher gives a reading assignment, and the kid does all he can within his power to be prepared without actually reading. Yeah, Cliff Notes, relying on others who actually read, Internet, etc...I was solidly one of those. Then in eleventh grade something life-changing happened.
There were several friends of mine passing around books like they were some sort of prized possessions. It was odd. Here I was avoiding reading like the plague, but their enthusiasm for reading was catching; it piqued my curiosity. I asked what they were reading, and one of my friends said, Anne Rice! Well, I folded and bought Interview with the Vampire.
WOW, I could not put the book down! I devoured it. I lived it. I breathed it. I had these burning, existential questions that would keep me up at night, and here I was reading conversations between Armand and Louis that hit on life, love, being, birth, death--all those questions that I wanted to ask of someone, some authority figure.
I don't want to go into plot details. I just want to share that this book affected me profoundly. One effect being that now you will rarely see me without a book in hand!
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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Erotic Tale! June 12, 2000
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
I first encounterd this book when I was 12 and in the library looking for something good to read. The title caught my eye and I checked it out and I'm glad I did! The story, as told from the point of view of the vampire Louis tells of the love/hate "family" relationship between Louis, his maker Lestat and their child Claudia. Louis is having a hard time dealing with the fact that he must kill in order to exsist (some call it whining, but I call it endearing). I read this book for the first time in a couple of days (it's that good) My favorite character in the entire vampire series is Louis. I know most people think that Lestat is the hero of this novel, but Interview is Louis' tale and I understand his point of view completely. He doesn't whine, Louis just wants a better understanding of what he is and how he should feel about that. I wish Ms. Rice would write novels featuring more of him because his character is so human and so beautifully written that I look for him FIRST in each new novel by her. Some have called it too homoerotic, but I happen to like this type of romance. It is obvious that Louis and Lestat both love and hate one another and it is this relationship that is the basis of the novel. If you have never read a book by Ms. Rice, let Interview With the Vampire be your first. But be warned, you'll get hooked!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Boring
This one was tough to get through. I'm glad I did but it could have been a lot shorter. :(
Published 1 day ago by D. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Quintessential vampire reading
The vampire chronicles series is up there with dracula as the story of vampires.

I love everything about the way she wrote these books. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Andrea D.
5.0 out of 5 stars love anne rice
the vampire chronicles are amazing! would really recommend this book to anyone that wants to feel compelled on so many levels
Published 11 days ago by Jennifer Wall
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing!
I've been wanting to read this book since I was 11 years old so exactly half of my life has been spent wanting to delve into the pages of Anne Rice's work but something kept... Read more
Published 14 days ago by MissKimberly
5.0 out of 5 stars Interview with the Vampire
Louis is a truly unusual vampire. None of the cliche characteristics, although by today's read one would think the tortured vamp. has been done many times before. Read more
Published 17 days ago by Book Lover
5.0 out of 5 stars I bought a used copy of this book
I bought a first run autographed copy, I had not even pay attention to the fact that it had been autographed, an added plus. It was in perfect condition. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Pam Ralston
5.0 out of 5 stars Great surprise!!!!
I bought this book as a used book. However when I received it in the mail I was very surprised at what I got. Read more
Published 1 month ago by BeccaG
4.0 out of 5 stars Interview with the Vampire
Good read by Anne Rice. This is the second time I have read the
Vampire Chronicles. Liked the Vampire Lastat the best
Published 2 months ago by Paula J
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
I've read them all and I am a fan of each one.
Lastat is such a bad boy and I couldn't wait
to see what he was going to do next.
Published 2 months ago by Patricia S. Whitt
1.0 out of 5 stars More Claudia, and would someone please kill Louis?
Let me start with what I love about Anne Rice and her novel. I love her name, "Anne Rice," if I ever have a daughter, I will name her Anne Rice, Anne for short. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Juliet
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Sex scenes Be the first to reply
Should I let my 12 year old read Interview w/ a Vampire?
As the author of this book, I find these posts very interesting. Would I let my twelve year old read this novel? Don't know. But I can tell you, based on the emails I get that many twelve year olds are reading this book and the sequels to it. If it's any consolation, the book does have a... Read more
Oct 9, 2009 by Anne Rice |  See all 18 posts
Does Anne Rice have any real talent?
Id say go out and get one of her books and decide on your own? Merrik and blackwood farm were really good. I loved her work. Some people dont need a writer to describe the places or spaces in great detail. Some Hate it, I like it as I dont picture it on my own. She describes places so vividly I... Read more
Sep 27, 2011 by Angel |  See all 5 posts
I'll wait for the 30th Anniversary Edition Be the first to reply
Where is the Kindle Version for all the Vampire Chronicles Books?
I want to read Anne Rice in my Kindle too
Sep 13, 2010 by CHAN K. Wai |  See all 2 posts
ANNE RICE interviewed in a new book! Be the first to reply
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