Violin [Hardcover]

Anne Rice (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 11, 1997

In the grand manner of Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice's new novel moves across time and the continents, from nineteenth-century Vienna to a St. Charles Greek Revival mansion in present-day New Orleans to the dazzling capitals of the modern-day world, telling a story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation.

At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana--who once dreamed of becoming a great musician--and the demonic fiddler Stefan, tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin first to enchant, then to dominate and draw her into a state of madness through the music she loves.

But Triana understands the power of the music perhaps even more than does Stefan--and she sets out to resist Stefan and to fight not only for her sanity but for her life. The struggle draws them both into a terrifying supernatural realm where they find themselves surrounded by memories, by horrors, and by overwhelming truths. Battling desperately, they are at last propelled towards the novel's astonishing and unforgettable climax.

Violin is crowded with the history, the drama, the invention, and the romantic intensity that have become synonymous with Anne Rice at her incomparable best.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If neatness counts for you, don't count on Anne Rice's musical-ghost novel Violin. It is an eruption of the author's personal demons, as messy as the monster bursting from that poor fellow's chest in the movie Alien. Like Rice, the heroine Triana lives in New Orleans, mourns a dead young daughter and a drunken mother, and is subject to uncanny visions. A violin-virtuoso ghost named Stefan time-trips and globetrots with Triana, taunting her for her inability to play his Stradivarius--which echoes composer Salieri's jealousy in Amadeus and possibly Rice's jealousy of her successful poet husband Stan Rice in the years before her own florid, lurid writing made her famous. The storytelling here is too abstract, but the almost certainly autobiographical emotions could not be more visceral. At one point, the narrator exclaims, "Shame, blame, maim, pain, vain!" But Rice's dip in the acid bath of memory was not in vain--she packs the pain of a lifetime into 289 pages.

From Booklist

Advice to Rice: don't write so much. She could have easily skipped her latest novel. She simply doles out hackneyed Rice themes and motifs and expects them to fly. They don't. In her New Orleans home, 54-year-old Triana Becker attends her partner Karl's death by AIDS; despite her focus on this horrible experience transpiring before her eyes, she is distracted by a violin-playing figure stepping in and out of shadows. Triana, in adolescence, had wanted to be a concert violinist, but the dream never materialized. Now she is seduced by this elusive figure's playing, and his seductiveness draws her into his netherworld, where she must encounter not only troubled memories but also the apparition's troubled past. But his violin--in her hands, will it give her the star-musician status she always dreamed of possessing? By the time that question is answered, the reader is weary of Rice's clumsy prose style and her lack of inventiveness in terms of plot. But she has fans galore, so be prepared for high demand. Brad Hooper

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st trade ed edition (October 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679433023
• ISBN-13: 978-0679433026
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (259 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,515,593 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.

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 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 550,000 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 Wolf Gift, a werewolf story set in Northern California in the present time, will be published on February 14th, 2012. With this book, 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 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, 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.

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully spoken catharsis, January 26, 2002

By 

"janmcalex" (Humboldt, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Violin (Mass Market Paperback)

In this pain-packed volume of beautifully expressed emotion, many demons are conquered -- the most infuriating of which is Stefan, a frustrated Stradivarius-obsessed ghost from long ago Austria, who haunts Triana, a newly widowed lover of classical music. Stefan uses Triana's painful past (a drunken mother, a negligent father, a broken marriage) and various losses (a daughter killed by cancer, a husband killed by AIDS, and a sister whose whereabouts are unknown) in an effort to justify his own sin of killing his father rather than relinquish his beloved Stradivarius.

Stefan tells Triana up front that he intends to drive her to madness. Using the misfortune in her life, he gives it a good effort; however, Triana proves herself stronger than he. Rather than harming her, Stefan helps Triana to heal, achieve and overcome.

Rice's beautiful writing is disruptive and confusing, and it should be. She is writing about hallucinations, conversations with a ghost, void of physical reality, but filled with the tone and fiber and emotion of dreams everyone experiences.

This is a unique book, the first by Anne Rice that I have read, and I believe a very under-appreciated book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anne Rice's most Autobiographical Work, September 15, 2001

By 

"jcuo26" (Nebraska United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Violin (Hardcover)

In my own never-to-be humble opion I beleive this to be Anne Rice's most authobiographical work thus far. It's apparent to me that Triana is in so many ways similar to Anne Rice. She describes herself for all practical purposes, right down to the bangs she has worn for as long as I've seen pictures of her. Even the way Triana dresses is Anne Rice right down to the long skirts of velvet. Of coarse the most poignant detail of the similarities is the daughter, dying of cancer with her angelic face puffy from chemotherapy and already having lost her beautiful blond curls gone before she was six years old. I think Triana was Anne's own voice regarding the horrible and unthinkable nature of burying your own baby. I really enjoyed this book obviously given the 'five stars'. I think Triana is a wonderful, human character which of coarse I was unaccustom to with Rice's work. It was lovely being able to aspire to her courage as she was 'just' a human, beautiful, scared, frail and strong all at the same time. She had her late husbands money to sheild her from the horrors of life whilst she suffered the fallout of having loved him and lost him. I didn't find it disturbing really at all her 'keeping' her Karl to herself for a few days after he passed on. In days of old, the family always prepared the corpse for burial, who else would be so loving and careful? It was disturbing, yes, but life's beautiful moments would be so much less so should we not have dark ones to balance them. The end of the book left me crying, as she helped yet another soul cross over, but this soul left her also with a beautiful gift. (I shall try not to give the end away, but suppose I already have, haven't I?) I don't envy her gifts as we are all blessed with our own and she certainly earned them all with her beloved service and devotion, this Triana... I loved her and will think of her as an 'old friend' along with Jane Eyre, Lastat, and so many others... Thanks Anne Rice for allowing us this peek into your mind and heart... I was reading this novel during the time of the horrible attack on the United States and it was a welcome reprieve when I simply couldn't take any more of the real horror coming out of my computer screen.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Self-indulgent emotional effusion., February 23, 2000

By 

Margaret Fiore - See all my reviews

This review is from: Violin (Hardcover)

Few authors handle the English language as musically and rhythmically as Anne Rice; this book is a beautifully flowing wash of words. However, the book is also supremely and tiresomely self-indulgent.

In this book, Rice has committed an egregious offence popular to many amateur authors: she talks directly of raw emotions rather than showing them in the actions of the characters, or building them into the atmosphere of the scenes. Unlike most of Rice' other works, which are a more even (and effective) mix of plot and introspection, Violin is simply chock-full of endless internal ponderings on death and guilt.

We begin the book with the death of Triana's AIDS-ridden husband Karl. Triana falls into a trance of despair and denial, and spends a couple of days alone in the house with the corpse and memories of all those she has loved and lost. So far so good! But somewhere in this wallowing in thoughts of death, we lose Karl. He becomes nothing more than a vanished benefactor, who paved Triana's life with money.

And then comes her ghost. From the beginning, the ghost is ambiguous. Good or evil? Bringing pleasure or pain? And for what purpose? Eventually, Triana takes up the position that the ghost intended to drive her insane. But it seems more a rationalization than a truth.

The remainder of the tale has no internal logic. Triana and her ghost ramble about from century to century, palace to palace, luxury to luxury. Triana progresses from wealth to talent to renown, and on to an ultimate victory. Why? How has she earned this? Where is the conflict or sacrifice? Should Triana's obsessive and unjustified guilt for the deaths of her loved ones earn such rewards?

Sorry Anne, it doesn't work.