Review | Anne Rice’s louche, flouncing vampires camp it up again
The 14th in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles is a crazy confection of very enjoyable nonsense, although the mystery of what makes a book into a bestseller remains unsolved
by Anne Rice
Chatto & Windus
What makes a bestseller a bestseller? I guess if I knew the answer I wouldn’t be writing reviews; I would be writing my 73rd hit novel. That aside, being in the right place at the right time is key. Jaws, helped by that movie, ignited our fear of monsters that were all too real. The Silence of the Lambs, helped by that movie, ignited our fear of monsters that were all too human. Twilight, helped by those movies, ignited our love of monsters that were anything but real or human. Fifty Shades of Grey? Not sure I really want to consider that one just yet.
How to account, then, for Anne Rice’s series of baroque vampire stories? For one thing, 1976’s Interview with the Vampire wasn’t helped so much as hindered by that movie – or rather by Tom Cruise on his personal quest to drive another nail into a much-loved book. Yes, little Tom, I am talking Jack Reacher here. But at least the frankly curious performances of Brad Pitt and, more winningly, Antonio Banderas caught the heady strangeness of Rice’s writing.
Where Stephenie Meyer’s Edward and Bella were cutesy and unthreatening, Rice’s vampires are sleek, deadly and sexually voracious. Try this on for size. “He held her as if he meant to kiss her, her breasts against his chest and her head fallen back as if her neck had been broken. Dipping his fingers into her open mouth, he brought the blood to his lips! Sweet sizzling sensations … He bent to suck the blood out of her mouth with his own.” The sheer sensual abandon, of the prose and the violence, makes E.L. James sound like E. Nesbit. And this guy isn’t even one of Rice’s usual villains.
As to timing, Rice famously drew on the most bitter and personal tragedy for her first vampire fiction. Her daughter, Michele, died of leukaemia in 1972. Rice talked later of experiencing visions of Michele having “something wrong with her blood”, and it’s not a fantastical leap to see Claudia, the child vampire of her debut, as both a poignant fantasy of wish fulfilment and a warning.