Book Review: Interview with the Vampire

Last week, I expressed some disappointment about Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, as I had hoped to be catapulted into a new obsession, but once I accepted that the obsession wasn’t to be, I actually did enjoy the book a lot. And it was super interesting comparing it to the 1994 movie, which Anne Rice wrote the screenplay for and apparently LOVED - like, “she took out a full page ad for the movie in the NYT” level of love.

Many of the changes are just streamlining. For instance, in the book both Louis and Lestat start out with living family members, who no longer exist in the movie (also movie Lestat is IIRC supposedly much too old to have living family members at all), and there’s also a section where Louis and Claudia go to eastern Europe searching for vampires but find only mindless undead bloodsucking revenants, which is cut in the movie to send them straight to Paris and Armand.

But there was one significant change I found fascinating: (  spoilers  )

Many people have told me they liked The Vampire Lestat more than Interview with the Vampire, so I plan to read that next Halloween. Then possibly Queen of the Damned the Halloween after? Although let me know if you think I should either stop after The Vampire Lestat or else extend my purview to include any of the later books.

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