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Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Interview with the vampire by Anne Rice

19 reviews

dark mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Overall a slow read. 
Louis is not as interesting a character as he makes himself out to be.
Deals with the unreliability of memory, catholic guilt and morals. 
He is constantly struggling with his vampiric nature and his need to drink blood and bring death vs. his own moral superiority and general aloofness. 
Because the world is being told through Louis and he isn't as interested in the history of vampires and his own struggle with existence it is at times hard to symphatize with him as a character. 

His inner thoughts about Claudia become very uncomfortable, especially when you keep in mind that she is physically 5. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Read the book because I love the show so much! It was fun to see where they got their inspiration from and the verbatim words they kept in. Overall, it’s a great book! I didn’t find it as slow and taxing as others described it but maybe that’s because I already love these characters. Louis’ catholic guilt is insane and at times so paralyzing. It’s exhausting to watch but his humanity despite his hunger and his senses are what make him such a compelling character. He doesn’t really paint Lestat in a great light at first, but his love for him is evident with the guilt of his murder. Claudia is such a tragic character, I found her the most macabre of all people. The way Louis describes her stillness as if she were just a doll is so eerie. I also noticed that Louis and Armand’s relationship really could have been something beautiful if not for their separate issues…..and that makes me sad. 

In conclusion, great book but I would recommend the television series more. They really take the essence of the book and make it better in my opinion.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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phillyhufflepunk's profile picture

phillyhufflepunk's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 64%

There's only so much casual pedophilia I can take. I tried to finish just to finish. I can briefly tolerate  that Louie is an unreliable narrator and begrudgingly read through it even though he doesn't seem to show any character growth in the hundreds of years since he was a bored, unthinking plantation owner who cared more about capitalism than the humanity of the people who worked his land. I just couldnt do it for nearly 300 pages. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I felt a lot of things reading this book - parts of it are deeply problematic (re: Claudia), but if you go in the with a grain of salt and self care ready, I think this is a solid read

The yearning is so strong in this book. There are moments where Louis’ sorrow is so tangible it has a physicality. It drapes over the narrative of prose of the book like a curtain.

“I didn’t know I thought these things. I spoke them now as my thoughts. And they were my most profound feelings taking a shape they could never have taken had I not spoken them, had I not thought them out this way in conversation with another. I thought myself then possessed of a passive mind, in a sense. I mean that my mind could only pull itself together, formulate thought out of the muddle of longing and pain, when it was touched by another mind; fertilized by it; deeply excited by that other mind and driven to form conclusions. I felt now the rarest, most acute alleviation of loneliness.  I could easily visualize and suffer the moment years before in another country, [. . .] and then that passionate and doomed affection for Claudia which made loneliness retreat behind the soft indulgence of the senses, the same senses that longed for the kill. [. . .] And it was as if the great feminine longing of my mind were being awakened again to be satisfied. And this I felt despite my own words: ‘But it’s that dark, that empty. And it is without consolation.’”



 The entire time I felt like I was seeing through Louis’ eyes and was keenly aware of
Lestat’s watchful gaze


“But Louis, this is the very spirit of your age. Don’t you see that? Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.”

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A book that has lived in my mind rent free since I read it. Another book I wish I could forget so I could reread it.

9/22:
I read this book in Dec 2020 and promptly became obsessed with it and the Vampire Chronicles. I still am, I reread this in anticipation of the TV show which I am loosing it with excitement looking forward to us. This book and series and author has a lot of flaws and I think rereading IWTV with the knowledge of what AR's later books would be like and the themes she will just keep hammering without any self relfection (pedophilia and incest) did bring out it's flaws even more. But still I can't not love this book it means so much to me I can barely put it into words. At least not something as short as a review, maybe a 40 page essay. The characters and everything they go through just feels so real to me and feels like it captures emotions that before I myself didn't know how to put into words. So despite all it's flaws and the fact that I would very willingly have fought Anne Rice in a Denny's parking lot (or would popeyes be more appropriate? 😂) this book is probably my absolute favorite book of all time and means the world to me. This reread took so long compared to how quickly I read other books a) bc I have like half the book underlined with lines or scenes I like and mostly b) because the emotions it invoked are so strong I often had to take a break


Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional reflective medium-paced
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings