Her Classic Book Of The Week… Interview With The Vampire

With our hectic lives and all of the new books that we are trying to keep on top of, we can often forget about the classics, those books that we loved to re-visit or the books that we just haven’t got to quite yet. Every week, we pick a classic book of the week that is a favourite of ours in the office. This week, we focus on the brilliant Interview with the Vampire. “People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil... Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”  Published in 1976, Interview with the Vampire was the debut Gothic novel from writer Anne Rice. Rice wrote the book based on one of her own short stories which told the tale of a vampire from the interviewer's perspective. Anne had written the book following the death of her daughter Michelle from leukaemia. It is believed that the Claudia's character is based on her daughter, Michelle. The book centres on Louis de Pointe du Lac, a planter from New Orleans who wishes to end his life following the death of his brother. Louis seeks out death to such a point that he eventually encounters Lestat, a vampire who can give him what he wants, seeing the world through new eyes and an end to the pain of the life he has been living. Louis agrees but little does he realise he must spend an eternity living in a box and feeding on human blood. Louis tires of his existence but things change when Lestat brings Claudia into their lives. Finally, Louis has someone to treat as his family and love as his own but Lestat grows jealous of their new daughter and when things come to a head, Louis discovers that neither of the pair can live in each other's company. Interview with the Vampire is gripping from beginning to end, particularly because of the evil Lestat who has clearly created Louis for his own purposes and will not put up with any interferences. The characters are not your typical vampires, forgive the pun, fleshed out and entirely believable, even for the fact that you are expected to believe that Louis spends hundreds of years on this earth. On top of the above, the old World that Rice creates is sumptuous and beautiful; she perfectly creates how we would imagine the old World to look, even highlighting illness, plagues and poverty, many of which Lestat and Louis feed on. However, Louis is very much the vampire with the conscious and refuses to take lives, unlike Lestat who gleefully removes everyone around him. The film adaptation directed by Neil Jordan also does the book great justice, almost as if he was meant to direct it. Certainly one of the better Gothic books you will read, Interview is just one of those vampire classics.