Interview with the Vampire

What do I seek to do here? Definitely not review a work that has been praised and hailed by critics and more intelligent book reviewers than I am. No. My intent is to enjoy the book fully, and to share with you that journey.

Right now the world is raving for Prince Lestat. I want to dive into that work. I wanted to eat it whole. I wanted to see what the rest of Anne Rice's readers are loving about the book. I also had the mind to start with Called Out of Darkness. It was her memoir, and would make a perfect foundation for this blog.

Until I thought, Rico, you promised yourself. Her books in the order they were published.

It is hard to write about Interview. I don't want to read the whole book and make one entry. I want to take you along with my reading, to pause at intervals, to savor each moment. But the structure of Interview is tricky, unlike most other novels. It is divided into four parts, and each part has no chapter divisions. There are gaps in between paragraphs, and there are sections where the initial of the first word is set in a larger type font. Maybe that was put there instead of chapter sections.

This format or structure make sense for Interview. The actual events of the book happen in one full night. A young boy talks to a vampire, and the vampire's life spans more than two hundred years. How wonderful to read it all through one whole evening, to begin at dusk when Louis (the vampire) would have risen from his coffin. To find him and the young boy in that apartment room along Divisadero Street. And to end the book just before sunrise, when Louis makes his heart-pounding exit from the novel. I am a stage actor so I'll use a lot of theatrical terms throughout this blog.

Tomorrow, Sunday, I will meet with my niece, Renee Francesca. She is fourteen now, and I was her age when I first read Interview. I will lend her my trade paperback copy. As I reread the book now and ask you to join me, I want to re-enter the minds of the characters, to see the world from their eyes, to understand their unique point of views. In short, to identify with them as closely as I could.

So this will not be so much as a review, but a record of a relationship. Tonight I begin the journey with the first book of (as yet) thirty-two. Tonight I plunge. Join me.