Book Review: ‘Interview with the Vampire’ by Anne Rice (Gothic vampire classic)
It’s that time of the season again: it’s the dark academia adjacent episode!
We headed to a cult classic from the 70s - a book that I’ve wanted to read for years, and one that Sarah has loved for forever - it was time to bring Louis and Lestat to The Dark Academicals with an episode dedicated to ‘Interview with the Vampire’.
There were so many things that made us think it would be perfect for the pod before we even began reading:
Ultimate Gothic vibes, and Gothic is a pre-cursor to dark academia
Introspective and dramatic narrator
A narrative that moves through 100s of years
You can listen to the full episode right here:
But did it actually have anything in common with dark academia in the end? A little!
In case you’ve not read the novel or seen either the 1994 film or last year’s new adaptation for TV, here’s what it’s all about:
In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood.
When Interview with the Vampire was published the Washington Post said it was a 'thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination . . . sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable'. Now, more than forty years since its release, Anne Rice's masterpiece is more beloved than ever.
I know, that doesn’t give much away, but that’s really all you need to know to get started!
‘Interview with the Vampire’ started out SO well for me; I was totally in love with it. But it quickly started to drag. This novel is dense and even though it’s not particularly long, it took me forever to read and I found myself drowning in Louis’ endless thoughts. The dude has a lot of feelings. A LOT. I did end up finding it a tiny bit grating after a while and I was ready for a break from him.
Yet his narration and the set up of the novel - Louis telling the story of his life to a young journalist in a dark room in the middle of night - helps create the atmosphere and the vibe that is so special in the novel. It’s almost hypnotic and even if it’s slow, there’s something irresistibly compelling about his narration and the way he sees the world. There’s an innocence to it under the darkness and brutality of living as a vampire and under the rule of Lestat.
There was a huge element of Louis’s narration, however, that gave me the massive ick. It was the way he thought, talked about and treated Claudia. It’s gross, unnecessary, and something that I’m surprised that I didn’t already know about. How is the inappropriate and predatory way that Claudia is treated, even as a human child and a fresh vampire, not widely acknowledged in the book internet? Is it just because it’s an older novel and possibly not in circulation in the same way anymore? I’m not sure, but I found it really uncomfortable to read and I think it hindered my enjoyment of the novel and Louis and Lestat as characters a significant amount.
We discussed all of this and more in the podcast episode and you can listen to it right here:
So is ‘Interview with the Vampire’ dark academia? Nope, but it absolutely worked for the podcast and definitely fits into the narrative of dark academia and the Gothic.
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Written by Sophie
