Interview With a Vampire (6 points)

I was not expecting to have as much of a fun time with this book as I did. I knew the basic plot points from my many years of binging youtube book reviews, but I was enamored with the constant shifting of perspective, from the interview to the recollection. I have only seen these types of storytelling methods in heist movies or comedies, but the cuts to the interview add a needed layer of retrospect from Louis that makes him a well-rounded character. Claudia was such an interesting character as both an examination of vampire culture and as another driving force in Louis’s life. Her and Louis’s relationship as a mixture of parental love, kinship, and partners was unique to me. Usually the roles are reversed, the older man being cold, calculating, and brutal and the younger woman being passive, emotional, and devoted. The reversal was such a nice change of pace, it kept me reading until things fell apart in Europe. Louie being such a passive character in general was such a nice balance from Lestat and Claudia in particular.

I noticed a theme of parenthood prevalent throughout the novel, taken in the forms of Lestat’s sireship to Louis, Lestat and his father, Claudia and her mother, Louis and Claudia, and Claudia and Madeleine. Specifically, the parentage relationships are emotionally abusive or neglectful in nature. I believe it to be a reflection of the monstrous characteristics in vampires. If the vampires in the novel were more caring and respectful to each other, I think the reader would have a sense of sympathy for them as a species. To combat this, Rice uses these themes of toxic relationships to remind the reader that these creatures are not heroes, alien to human sympathy yet just as complex.

I think I have mentioned in a previous post about how much I love tragedy, this novel being no different. I knew that the death of Claudia and Madeleine was coming, yet when Louis opened that door into their death site, I was fascinated by how visceral Louis’s reaction was. I liked the points in the novel when he would go into these dissociative states because of how strong the emotions Rice could pull from the imagery. So, when Louis kept going in and out of reality out of the shock of Claudia’s death, I was in one of those narrative highs. When words, emotions, and story come together for a reader in a magical way, it is not something that happens to me that often. It was very fun.