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Dec 16, 2009

Gus rated it:

I hate Anne Rice's writing so much that if it and I were in a romantic comedy together we'd be destined to fall in love and be married by the end of the movie.

18 comments like (92 people liked it)

Apr 18, 2011

Mark rated it:

One of the rare few books I couldn't finish. I could not empathize with the lead character at all - once he turned into a vampire I would be regularly bombarded with paragraphs describing how goddamn beautiful everything was now that he could see them with his vampire eyes. The forest was beautiful, the night sky was beautiful, the homeless people were beautiful...not normally, mind you, only when seen through vampire eyes.

These special vampire eyes might be the reason why Louis (n More...

10 comments like (33 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2011

Kat rated it:

If you would kindly look at my shelves, you might notice that I've read a good chunk of vampire novels written in the past two decades. It seemed strange to me, though, that I still hadn't read one of the more important ones.

Now, I don't think it's because this book is particularly brilliant or a masterpiece. Yet it does represent an important paradigm shift in the representation of vampires in modern literature. Whilst Vampires are still unaccountably evil in this novel, they a More...

26 comments like (40 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Shovelmonkey1 rated it:

Poor vampires. Such a bad press over the years what with all the blood sucking, neck snapping and general ravaging of virgins, maidens and anyone with a taste for Gothic-style bedroom furniture and an open window.

Still, now that Edward Cullen and his pan-faced fan base of moody teens have infiltrated popular culture, replacing the stereotypical images of pale, foppish young men in lacy cuffs and brocaded velvet jackets with a utilitarian Gap-Style wardrobe of urban wear (and a slightl More...

5 comments like (10 people liked it)

Oct 29, 2011

Becky rated it:

Oy... Can a book be disappointing if I expected not to like it? Or, rather, can I be disappointed in it?

Yep.

This was seriously boring. And repetitive. And boringly repetitive. And unexciting and also it rehashed the same things over and over. And over. Did I mention it was boring? Because it was. Even more than I expected. At about 100 pages in, I was like "OK, this isn't terrible, that's good." And then... It just stayed right there. At "Not Terrible" More...

12 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2011

Sherri rated it:

It was 1978 and I was visiting my aunt and cousins in the mountains of North Carolina. My older cousin, Karen, was away being a teenager (Bible camp, I think) and I slept in her room while she was gone. I had a new color-in blacklight poster, the black flocking untouched, and a precious Peter Frampton poster I'd bought with my allowance. My other cousin, Lynn, and I spent hours roaming the wilds around the trailer and giggling over Shaun Cassidy and her passion for KISS. Karen had this book s More...

18 comments like (19 people liked it)

Mar 03, 2011

Gaijinmama rated it:

I am going to confess that I didn't read this book until 1993, after I'd seen the movie. I couldn't handle horror movies or scary books at the time, but Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and a surprisingly good Tom Cruise really got my attention.
Now I'm a bona fide fan. I'm working toward reading everything Rice has written, and now I enjoy many other authors who write about vampires.
It wasn't just that the vampire dudes were soooo totally hot in the movie. As is usually the case, the b More...

9 comments like (21 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2008

Ren rated it:

I first read this book in High School and my sad gothic self immediately fell in love with its beautiful, damaged characters. For years this book haunted me. The rest of the Vampires books were pulpy fun but this book really had something. She captured something here and her almost baroque prose really carries the story.

Later in life, I came to realize that Interview is a kind of Catcher In The Rye for goths. Louis is turned into a vampire and continues his search for the answers: w More...

3 comments like (36 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jason rated it:

Okay, I confess, I've actually read the first three of the novels in this fantastical series; but that they declined in quality so rapidly and profoundly that I just couldn't continue after that. Still, though, this first book of the series continues to be surprisingly strong, even if it single-handedly brought about an entire "goth industry" that threatens to turn all of Rice's original material into parodies of itself. A sprawling epic that is as much a vivid fictional history of the More...

2 comments like (20 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2010

Joelle rated it:

I thought it was slow, difficult to read. I finished it only by sheer determination, not out of pleasure.

2 comments like (15 people liked it)

May 05, 2011

Rumi rated it:

"Interview with the Vampire" is a truly remarkable book. Without claiming to be a fantasy know-it-all, I'd like to say that the characters in this book are probably some of the most well-developed fantasy creatures out there. Each one has their own doubts, fears, hopes, and a whole system of values. They might not always act as expected from them, but then again, do they have to be perfect, all-knowing, wise and so very distant from humans every single time? What Anne Rice has created More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 19, 2011

Black Elephants rated it:

I proudly spent the first part of my weekend with the undead, meaning that I watched episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a television show that is glorious, an example of genius and just neat-o. I enjoy my cheese. So, it seemed logical to delve further into the vampiric canon and finally buy Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire.

First, it must be understood that I have a history with this book. Aside from already seeing the movie (which I thought was fine) and reading Rice's Mayfair More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2008

Tracy rated it:

This book was a slow read, and I didn't find it very interesting. The narrative drifts in and out of metaphorical prose, making it difficult to understand what was really happening and what was artistic expression. The author became so caught up in the love of her own prose that she afflicted the reader with the mental haze of her storyteller. I tend to read at a faster pace, and many passages required re-reading to grasp what really was going on. If this was the only problem with the book, More...

3 comments like (15 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2010

Christina Stind rated it:

This is my first Anne Rice novel and her writing reminds me of Stephen King - they both drag you into their worlds and keep you there, making you race though it to the end as fast as possible to find out what happens.
Interview with the Vampire is the story of Louis mostly, how he became a vampire at the hands of Lestat, how they together made the child vampire Claudia, how Claudia and Louis parted ways with Lestat and went out into the world to search for other vampires and finally found More...

3 comments like (12 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2010

Brooke rated it:

Interview with a Vampire was a completely different kind of book than anything I have ever read. I probably never would have picked it up, but it was the book of choice for bookclub this month. I was very surprised by how much I liked it because typically I don't read vampire books (with the exception of the Twilight saga, and come on, EVERYONE read those) and I would have thought this book would be too slow for my liking. But for some reason, I found myself really enjoying it.

The w More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Apr 30, 2008

Star rated it:

I'd loved that you get a person talking to a vampire and there is no threat that it will go at you and that it's telling you it's life story or actually how it became what it is. the journey it had taken over the centuries and knowing who actually turned it to what it is now. plus wanting to know of it's origin and the oldest of the old of it's kind.

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2008

Cecilia rated it:

Este fue el libro que hizo que, durante varios años de mi vida, anne rice fuera una de las escritoras que más leía. Y no tenía nada que ver con ser "gótico", si no que, simplemente sus personajes me parecían sumamente reales. La soledad, la miseria, el odio y el amor, son emociones humanas, no vampíricas, por lo tanto, no es difícil comprender por qué tantas personas se "enamoraron" de sus vampiros y siguieron toda la saga de novelas vampíricas que esta mujer creo. Otro de lo More...

5 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 07, 2008

Kitiara rated it:

Esta primera novela vampírica de Anne Rice, es un claro ejemplo de lo que la literatura gótica es. Hubo un antes y un después en los libros de vampiros, después de esta trilogia.

Si bien el resto de sus novelas de vampiros tienen una fluidez, una rítmica y un estilo totalmente diferentes, no se puede apreciar la trilogía sin llegar a amar y a odiar a este libro.

Es oscuro y angustioso. La acción sucede muy lentamente, y sin embargo cuando ocurre es casi violentamente rápida More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2010

Michelle rated it:

I first read The Vampire Chronicles in the 1980s when I was a teenager. I loved them even then, but I'm getting a lot more out of them now that I'm older.

Interview isn't my very favorite of the lot, but I have to give it 5-stars for introducing us to a dark, modern incarnation of the vampire and for setting up an incredibly complex world using just the seed of original vampire lore. While this one reads a bit more more commercial than the second book, The Vampire Lestat (putting up More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2008

Aik rated it:

I went in expecting to hate this, seeing that it's meant to have caused the decline of vampire fiction and all. I didn't see this while reading it. Perhaps it's the fault of later books in the series.

The book has its problems. The 'interview' parts are jarring and unnecessary, and the story would have been better told without them. There's also an extreme 'lolwut?' moment where the main character starts acting from impossible to understand motives. Other than this, everything is good More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2011

Erika rated it:

I remember my mother telling me she liked the interview with the vampire movie a lot, and i think i saw it but it was a long time ago, so i don't really remember having seen it, only my mother telling me she liked the movie.

Later when i was wandering through the Goodreads pages i saw this book, and i was fairly excited with this book and the whole series, more for all the good opinions about it, that i thought it was a book i should totally read, and thought i would love it.

More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2012

Peter rated it:

I have the audible audiobook version as it took me many years to get round to finally 'reading' this book, but I loved it. I think it has so many great characters and ideas and the prose is so atmospheric and alive, helped here by a good reading by Simon Vance.

The characters are paradoxically human in their dilemmas and concerns with death, immortality, morality, and the truth of life. I loved the way Louis describes things, especially his many description of heightened emotional or More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2011

Kindle-aholic rated it:

First read around 1994, here's what I remember: 4 stars; Brooding immortals who curse themselves and their inhumanity - only these don't sparkle.

My first taste of Anne Rice and I loved every brooding, moping moment of it. Lushly written, I devoured it.

Second read Feb 2011: 5 stars. This book, written in the 70s still stands up with all of the vampire novels of today. Rice's vampires are inhuman immortals, but with enough shades of their former humanity to keep them somewh More...

11 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 14, 2011

teacup_carousel rated it:

It seems inevitable that with the resurgent popularity of all things VAMPIRE that this book would start popping up again on everybody's "to read" list. But what's popular now in modern vampire mythos is completely anathema to everything this book is, and I can't help but feel a little sad on behalf of both the unwitting reader picking this book up to satisfy what they think is going to be a quick vampire fix, and for the text its self. A quick scroll through the reviews for this and yo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2011

Knowledge Lost rated it:

It’s a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a very long time and finally did; the first book of the Vampire Chronicles, Interview with the Vampire. Surprisingly enough, Anne Rice has a certain beauty in her writing that reminds me of 19th century writing, which is a big bonus for me, as I do adore that style. The whole story is almost philosophical in the way it tells the struggle of Louis and his moral conscience, even though he has been turned into a Vampire. The battle of good and evil is More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2010

Cristal rated it:

Louis's world is somber, lush, beautiful and heartbreaking. This wasn't the first book in The Vampire Chronicles I read, I picked up Merrick first and immediately was most intrigued by Lestat de Lioncourt, so I purchased Tale Of The Body Thief and then read The Vampire Lestat, Queen of The Damned and the rest of the series in order.

This book, the first in the saga, was ironically the last one I read. I guess I avoided it because Louis struggles so much with being a vampire, while Les More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2008

Carrie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2009

Brad rated it:

Twenty winters ago I read Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire for the first time. I read it again just before Neil Jordan's film version came out, and then I let it slip into the recesses of my personal mythology, only letting the memory of it pop out once in a while for some wistful nostalgia and a vow to read it again.

This year's glut of filmed Vampire adaptations -- HBO's True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books, and Stephanie Meyer's Twilight -- got me More...

5 comments like (14 people liked it)

Apr 26, 2008

Werner rated it:

To give credit where it's due, Rice's treatment of vampires in this book (and her succeeding ones) broke new ground in the sub-genre, in that she portrays them as actual characters, free moral agents whose personalities and values are continuous with those they had as living people, rather than ciphers wholly transformed into instinctive killing and feeding machines. (Of course, the TV series Dark Shadows, with the vampire character Barnabas, pioneered the same new ground earlier; but that was More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2008

Tom rated it:

I wrote this review for an English course at BYU.

Questioning Humanity
Review by Tom Johnson

Anne Rice redefines the vampire lore in Interview with the Vampire, the first installment of The Vampire Chronicles. In her sensuous, poetic, and disturbing novel Rice explores the value of humanity by juxtaposing it with vampirism. This same blend of vivid imagery and psychological tinkering that attracted mature readers to The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)