Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Another audiobook. I’m really starting to like this audiobook thing. When I finish one I can’t wait to get to the library and get another one. This one was okay. I liked it well enough but not to the level of some others. Maybe it’s because I’m listening to it instead of reading it, but I really got hooked into the gimmick of the book, that it is the story of the Vampire, told by the Vampire himself, as he is being interviewed by the Boy. Hyperaware of this construct, I found myself disbelieving a lot of the story because it was told with too much detail, told as if it was currently happening rather than as a recollection of something that happened 200 years ago. And then there was the necessity to keep reminding me that it was an interview by interrupting the narrative for an unnecessary exchange between the Vampire and the Boy. Interruptions that continued until about halfway through the book when they stopped altogether, perhaps because Rice had realized how disruptive they were. But don’t worry, the Boy comes back at the very end, after listening to everything the Vampire has told him, everything about a vampire’s cursed existence, and lo and behold, now the Boy wants to be a vampire, too. Thankfully, the Vampire does not oblige him, and the book ends with the Boy using his tape recording of the interview to figure out where the vampire who made the Vampire lives, and he goes off to find him.

One thing I did like about the book was the way a vampire who was created in one century had a difficult time dealing with the mortal reality of another, so much so that vampires rarely lived for more than a few centuries before taking their own lives. Makes them more fragile than anyone would expect. They are the masters of any single mortal life, but string those mortal lives together into the inevitable progress of centuries, and the vampire is little more than a frightened and senile creature, unable to make any sense out of the world that surrounds them.

I was also disappointed that the question of the afterlife was not explored in greater detail. It was alluded to a few times. What was the relationship, if any, of the immortal vampire to God and the devil? Louis wanted to find out, but he never did and neither do we. Maybe I shouldn’t fault Rice for teasing and then avoiding the subject. Perhaps I’m the only one who likes writing books about questions that can’t be answered.