Such an amazingly good story, a true classic in every sense of the word. Heart-wrenching, haunting… you won’t want to put it down.
Interview with the Vampire
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 8,916 ratings
Price: 19.69
Last update: 11-11-2024
About this item
40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a magnificent, compulsively readable thriller...Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth—the education of the vampire” (Chicago Tribune). The inspiration for the hit television series
The time is now.
We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks--as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . .
He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently . . . carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir--young, romantic, cultivated--to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the "endless," life . . . learning first to sustain himself on the blood of cocks and rats caught in the raffish streets of New Orleans, then on the blood of human beings . . . to the years when, moving away from his final human ties under the tutelage of the hated yet necessary Lestat, he gradually embraces the habits, hungers, feelings of vampirism: the detachment, the hardened will, the "superior" sensual pleasures.
He carries us back to the crucial moment in a dark New Orleans street when he finds the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her, struggling against the last residue of human feeling within him . . .
We see how Claudia in turn is made a vampire--all her passion and intelligence trapped forever in the body of a small child--and how they arrive at their passionate and dangerous alliance, their French Quarter life of opulence: delicate Grecian statues, Chinese vases, crystal chandeliers, a butler, a maid, a stone nymph in the hidden garden court . . . night curving into night with their vampire senses heightened to the beauty of the world, thirsting for the beauty of death--a constant stream of vulnerable strangers awaiting them below . . .
We see them joined against the envious, dangerous Lestat, embarking on a perilous search across Europe for others like themselves, desperate to discover the world they belong to, the ways of survival, to know what they are and why, where they came from, what their future can be . . .
We follow them across Austria and Transylvania, encountering their kind in forms beyond their wildest imagining . . . to Paris, where footsteps behind them, in exact rhythm with their own, steer them to the doors of the Théâtre des Vampires--the beautiful, lewd, and febrile mime theatre whose posters of penny-dreadful vampires at once mask and reveal the horror within . . . to their meeting with the eerily magnetic Armand, who brings them, at last, into intimacy with a whole brilliant and decadent society of vampires, an intimacy that becomes sudden terror when they are compelled to confront what they have feared and fled . . .
In its unceasing flow of spellbinding storytelling, of danger and flight, of loyalty and treachery, Interview with the Vampire bears witness of a literary imagination of the first order.
Top reviews from the United States
Julia Cruz5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful, haunting, an absolute must-read
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2024LynnS775.0 out of 5 stars
The First Vampire Interview
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2023
The story begins with a vampire agrees to be interviewed by someone he repeatedly refers to as a “boy”. Of course, to a 200 year old vampire any human male might be called a boy, but we will assume the interviewer was very young. The young man has an old fashioned tape recorder and repeatedly changes tapes throughout the story, so it’s easy to place the story in the 1970’s. The young man’s name is never given.
Louis de Pointe du Lac was was twenty five year old plantation owner when he was turned into a vampire by his maker who needed the riches Louis possessed. Louis finds the experience of being a vampire story worthy and always felt that his maker Lestat was too indifferent to the wonders of their senses and their vampire powers.
Louis was fascinated by Lestat as a human, but once he became a vampire himself he was no longer under the vampiric glamour, suddenly he realized that he couldn’t stand being around his maker. Unfortunately there were things he needed to learn and Lestat was the only vampire available to teach him what he needed to know. Such as the fact that Louis hated killing humans and Lestat withheld the knowledge that animal blood was would also sustain them.
Eventually there are those on the plantation who become suspicious of the strange men, and there is and uprising and the workers come for Lestat and Louis and they are forced to flee.
Escaping to New Orleans Louis finds himself in a state of near starvation and sees a young girl clinging to her mother who had just died from a disease that would soon claim the child. Thinking he is being merciful, Louis drains her, but Lestat turns her and and makes her into a vampire child named Claudia. They spoil her and delight in her presence, but as much as she learns she can never grow a woman’s body, even though she has a woman’s mind.
Eventually Claudia becomes angry with Lestat for the state of her forever childhood and tries to him, and Louis and Claudia flee him and go to Paris together. There the search for and eventually find other vampires which will be both for their enlightenment and their downfall.
This was the first of several of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and there are people who didn’t like this book. I liked it very much, but I think some people didn’t like it because there is a discrepancy between the Lestat and Louis in this book and the ones in the following books. Lestat is way more fun in the next book and Louis eventually is a friend of his. Lestat was not an old vampire when he made Louis, in fact he wanted Louis’ plantation to house his father who was still alive. I’m also pretty certain Anne Rice just had the idea of writing this book, but didn’t have all the other books in her head yet. However it happened, this book wasn’t as much fun as THE VAMPIRE LESTAT or my favorite THE TALE OF THE BODY THEIF, but in honor of the Halloween picks I decided to reread this and it’s still pretty good.
Louis de Pointe du Lac was was twenty five year old plantation owner when he was turned into a vampire by his maker who needed the riches Louis possessed. Louis finds the experience of being a vampire story worthy and always felt that his maker Lestat was too indifferent to the wonders of their senses and their vampire powers.
Louis was fascinated by Lestat as a human, but once he became a vampire himself he was no longer under the vampiric glamour, suddenly he realized that he couldn’t stand being around his maker. Unfortunately there were things he needed to learn and Lestat was the only vampire available to teach him what he needed to know. Such as the fact that Louis hated killing humans and Lestat withheld the knowledge that animal blood was would also sustain them.
Eventually there are those on the plantation who become suspicious of the strange men, and there is and uprising and the workers come for Lestat and Louis and they are forced to flee.
Escaping to New Orleans Louis finds himself in a state of near starvation and sees a young girl clinging to her mother who had just died from a disease that would soon claim the child. Thinking he is being merciful, Louis drains her, but Lestat turns her and and makes her into a vampire child named Claudia. They spoil her and delight in her presence, but as much as she learns she can never grow a woman’s body, even though she has a woman’s mind.
Eventually Claudia becomes angry with Lestat for the state of her forever childhood and tries to him, and Louis and Claudia flee him and go to Paris together. There the search for and eventually find other vampires which will be both for their enlightenment and their downfall.
This was the first of several of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and there are people who didn’t like this book. I liked it very much, but I think some people didn’t like it because there is a discrepancy between the Lestat and Louis in this book and the ones in the following books. Lestat is way more fun in the next book and Louis eventually is a friend of his. Lestat was not an old vampire when he made Louis, in fact he wanted Louis’ plantation to house his father who was still alive. I’m also pretty certain Anne Rice just had the idea of writing this book, but didn’t have all the other books in her head yet. However it happened, this book wasn’t as much fun as THE VAMPIRE LESTAT or my favorite THE TALE OF THE BODY THEIF, but in honor of the Halloween picks I decided to reread this and it’s still pretty good.
Shannon L. Yarbrough4.0 out of 5 stars
Where Today's Vampires Came From
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2012
My first encounter with Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire was in the early 1990s when a grade school girl friend had purchased a paperback copy at a yard sale for fifty cents. I remember her clutching it to her chest and kicking her feet in the air while lying on her bed as she exclaimed, "I am in love with this book!"
I did not follow her advice and read it for myself. But in 1994, much to the hype of its two leading actors, I was fascinated by the film adaptation which was released while I was working my first job in a movie theater.
Six years later I was working in a bookstore and regularly listening to the hype of other vampire fans who lusted after every new book in the Chronicles series. I finally picked up The Witching Hour after being encouraged by a close friend but I put it down before finishing it because I just didn't feel like I was a mature enough reader at the time to enjoy it the way it was intended.
But I was turned on to Anne's son and his writing that year after I attended a book signing for his first book, Density of Souls. Now, another 12 years later, I finally decided to read his mother.
After reading Anne's latest, The Wolf Gift, just a few weeks ago and being well pleased with it, I decided it was finally time to give her vampires a try. I'd been collecting her books in hardcover with intention to read them at some point and my copy of Interview is a 1976 hardcover 1st edition.
It's hard to believe this book came out the year I was born. It definitely reads like a timeless classic and holds its appeal still today. As long as readers are fascinated by vampires, I'm sure Interview will be in print and continue to sell. I was also surprised by how well the book was adapted to film, but that is to be expected since, to my knowledge, Anne did work on the script.
My main problem was that it's almost impossible not to picture Tom Cruise as Lestat or Brad Pitt as Louis while reading it. Surprisingly, Kirsten Dunst did not pop into my head as much for Claudia. And I tried desperately to keep Antonio out of my head as Armand since he was my least favorite actor in the movie.
I also enjoyed the minor plot lines that were in the book, but not in the movie - the biggest being the presence of Lestat's human father in the beginning of the book.
Even though it's one of the shortest books in the Vampire Chronicles, it is definitely not a light read. At 309 pages, it took me just over 2 weeks to read it. Rice is extremely poetic and does tend to over romanticize descriptions. Heavy descriptions of ornate clothing, furnishings, and New Orleans settings really dragged the narrative for me at times, though Rice definitely knows how to paint a picture for her readers.
That being said, you do get a definite sense of Louis's struggle (both physical and emotional) with being a vampire. You are in his head 100% even though he's telling the story; his emotional turmoil with who he is and the debate of good and evil is prevalent. But it is often Lestat's pride and acceptance of what he is that drives the book, despite how much Louis despises him. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book in the series which focuses entirely on Lestat.
Though this book wasn't completely my forte, I do have an appreciation and admiration for it just because it really did define the genre that we know today. While vampires have become more monstrous and much more accepting of what and who they are, perhaps in a way they all stemmed from the beautiful lost Louie or boastful Lestat.
I did not follow her advice and read it for myself. But in 1994, much to the hype of its two leading actors, I was fascinated by the film adaptation which was released while I was working my first job in a movie theater.
Six years later I was working in a bookstore and regularly listening to the hype of other vampire fans who lusted after every new book in the Chronicles series. I finally picked up The Witching Hour after being encouraged by a close friend but I put it down before finishing it because I just didn't feel like I was a mature enough reader at the time to enjoy it the way it was intended.
But I was turned on to Anne's son and his writing that year after I attended a book signing for his first book, Density of Souls. Now, another 12 years later, I finally decided to read his mother.
After reading Anne's latest, The Wolf Gift, just a few weeks ago and being well pleased with it, I decided it was finally time to give her vampires a try. I'd been collecting her books in hardcover with intention to read them at some point and my copy of Interview is a 1976 hardcover 1st edition.
It's hard to believe this book came out the year I was born. It definitely reads like a timeless classic and holds its appeal still today. As long as readers are fascinated by vampires, I'm sure Interview will be in print and continue to sell. I was also surprised by how well the book was adapted to film, but that is to be expected since, to my knowledge, Anne did work on the script.
My main problem was that it's almost impossible not to picture Tom Cruise as Lestat or Brad Pitt as Louis while reading it. Surprisingly, Kirsten Dunst did not pop into my head as much for Claudia. And I tried desperately to keep Antonio out of my head as Armand since he was my least favorite actor in the movie.
I also enjoyed the minor plot lines that were in the book, but not in the movie - the biggest being the presence of Lestat's human father in the beginning of the book.
Even though it's one of the shortest books in the Vampire Chronicles, it is definitely not a light read. At 309 pages, it took me just over 2 weeks to read it. Rice is extremely poetic and does tend to over romanticize descriptions. Heavy descriptions of ornate clothing, furnishings, and New Orleans settings really dragged the narrative for me at times, though Rice definitely knows how to paint a picture for her readers.
That being said, you do get a definite sense of Louis's struggle (both physical and emotional) with being a vampire. You are in his head 100% even though he's telling the story; his emotional turmoil with who he is and the debate of good and evil is prevalent. But it is often Lestat's pride and acceptance of what he is that drives the book, despite how much Louis despises him. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book in the series which focuses entirely on Lestat.
Though this book wasn't completely my forte, I do have an appreciation and admiration for it just because it really did define the genre that we know today. While vampires have become more monstrous and much more accepting of what and who they are, perhaps in a way they all stemmed from the beautiful lost Louie or boastful Lestat.