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 what they were searching for and more in Paris, at the Théâtre des Vampires.
But it is also a story of being who you are and accepting your nature. This is especially evident because of the fact that Louis tells his life story to a boy and tells about the fight he has continued to fight over the centuries - the fight between good and evil. Louis sees the kill (of humans, at least) as evil - but at the same time some kind of kill is necessary to keep him alive. And even though Louis thinks the boy should be scared of him, he has no intention of killing him.
I liked Rice's take on the vampire legends. Having grown up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have most of my vampire knowledge from that tv show and Rice has another take on the vampire myth altogether. In her world, garlic and crosses are not capable of hurting a vampire - only fire, beheading and sunlight are deadly to them, otherwise they are immortal. This also makes the struggle between good and evil more interesting because normally, the fact that the cross (and holy water) hurts vampires is a easy way of showing that they are evil but without this part of the myth, their being evil is more of a question and therefore more interesting.
For me, the most interesting part was Claudia - Claudia can be seen as an example of what would have happened to Peter Pan if he had been allowed to never grow up. Imagine living century after century as a small child - at some points, dolls and toys are not enough to satisfy you, you want more, but how are you going to get it, being pint size and all?