Book Review: Interview with the Vampire
Nov. 3rd, 2025 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerLast 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: In the movie, after Claudia dies, probably with Armand’s collusion although he’s set it up so it looks like he’s innocent, Louis ditches Armand. In the book, they spend the next few decades hanging around together, even though Louis knows Armand is probably guilty, because he’s just so worn out and dull with despair that he can’t bother to get rid of him. Fascinated that Rice changed this or at least approved the change, because it gives the end sequence a very different emotional valence.
(Another change that I found striking: in the movie, Louis discovers that he can see the sun again through cinema, which doesn’t happen in the book. An example of movie Louis retaining an emotional engagement with the world, however tenuous, while book Louis really does seem to have died emotionally with Claudia’s death.)
I thought overall that book Armand was a much stronger presence than movie Armand - Louis’s idea of vampire heaven is probably encapsulated in those scenes where he and Armand sit and have deep chats about the nature of good and evil, both in Armand’s lair and in the tower. So in the book, I believe that Louis would leave Claudia for Armand, which I never fully believed in the movie, and in some ways it makes Claudia’s death more tragic because really all Armand needed to do was wait, the man is already four hundred years old so you’d think he could wait a week, but NO he wants Louis NOW so he arranges Claudia’s death and in doing so ends up killing Louis’s capacity for emotion which is what drew him to Louis in the first place.
Vampire-fashion, this love is also a devouring: Armand wants to feed off Louis’s emotion, because it will give him continued interest in the world, so he can bear to continue to exist.
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.
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: In the movie, after Claudia dies, probably with Armand’s collusion although he’s set it up so it looks like he’s innocent, Louis ditches Armand. In the book, they spend the next few decades hanging around together, even though Louis knows Armand is probably guilty, because he’s just so worn out and dull with despair that he can’t bother to get rid of him. Fascinated that Rice changed this or at least approved the change, because it gives the end sequence a very different emotional valence.
(Another change that I found striking: in the movie, Louis discovers that he can see the sun again through cinema, which doesn’t happen in the book. An example of movie Louis retaining an emotional engagement with the world, however tenuous, while book Louis really does seem to have died emotionally with Claudia’s death.)
I thought overall that book Armand was a much stronger presence than movie Armand - Louis’s idea of vampire heaven is probably encapsulated in those scenes where he and Armand sit and have deep chats about the nature of good and evil, both in Armand’s lair and in the tower. So in the book, I believe that Louis would leave Claudia for Armand, which I never fully believed in the movie, and in some ways it makes Claudia’s death more tragic because really all Armand needed to do was wait, the man is already four hundred years old so you’d think he could wait a week, but NO he wants Louis NOW so he arranges Claudia’s death and in doing so ends up killing Louis’s capacity for emotion which is what drew him to Louis in the first place.
Vampire-fashion, this love is also a devouring: Armand wants to feed off Louis’s emotion, because it will give him continued interest in the world, so he can bear to continue to exist.
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.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-03 07:13 pm (UTC)I like your plan for the next two Halloweens; I too liked The Vampire Lestat more than Interview with the Vampire, and The Queen of the Damned even more!
On the subject of Anne Rice, my favorite of her novels I've read is Cry to Heaven. Like, I reread it every five years or so!
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Date: 2025-11-04 02:27 pm (UTC)Once I've finished the first three Vampire Chronicles, I will see if I need to continue the Anne Rice Halloween tradition to include any other Anne Rices.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-04 02:00 am (UTC)I have bounced profoundly off all the Anne Rice I have ever tried to read, but I appreciate the second-eyes view!
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Date: 2025-11-04 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-04 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-04 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-06 03:31 am (UTC)I would not stop after TVL. I would stop after QotD. In my mind, TVL and QotD very much "go" together as far as what they're trying to achieve and the style the books are written in, and TVL kind of ends on a cliffhanger. How huge a cliffhanger depends on your definition. But all the the mythology that TVL starts, QotD continues and ends. Really, QotD felt like an "ending" to the series, but then the series just. kept. going. Both books are also narrated by Lestat (or at least, most of QotD is, IIRC). Basically these two books are Peak Anne Rice IMO and it's all downhill from there.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-06 07:23 pm (UTC)