Link : Amazon, Goodreads. Price: £8.99
In a dark room, a young journalist sits with his tape deck and an impossible interviewee. For across him sits the Vampire Louis, made a vampire in 1791 Louisiana, and he wants to tell the story of his life. From the old world to the New, from New Orleans to Paris, from the loss of a brother to the loss of a daughter and a lover, this interview will change everything.
In the words of Lestat: Stop whining Louis!
The problem with creating a great, original work is that everyone copies you and, eventually, you look just as derivative as anyone else who writes about vampires for whom eternal life is a great torment they can only assuage via romance with children. I’m taking the piss a little bit (just a little, and mostly out of other books), but Anne Rice changed the vampire genre and, forty years later, thousands of words of Louis complaining of the agony that comes with killing is a little tired.
I was in the forces; I can promise you there are people that kill and then sleep fine. It is absolutely something you can get used to. Plus, I’m totally ready to take a shot at living forever: there are plenty of men and women out there killing for a mediocre salary and a uniform, which is by any standard a much worse deal.
Yet the passion in Rice’s first novel is still there. In later novels she becomes more professional, writes tighter script, but there is something to be said for the way she pours everything she has into Louis endless indecision, doubt and despair. Accept him as he is – as he tells you he is – a deeply flawed protagonist, indulge in some eternal adolescent anguish, and there is a lot to enjoy. Plus, this book is it. Without Interview with the Vampire you don’t have Buffy, you don’t have Twilight, you don’t have True Blood. If you are at all a vampire fan, then you must read this book.
