Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

45 reviews

cecilyroseceillam's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Starting my yearly re read of the vampire chronicles, I obviously had to start with interview. This book is amazing and highly worth reading, the character development is amazing and following them is so interesting, Claudia is personally my favourite and I love her story, where she’s turned against her will into a vampire after her mother has died and she grows up while her body doesn’t. It’s extremely tragic and very beautifully written; I love her character development too and seeing what she deals with as a woman stuck in a child’s body. I also enjoy reading the relationship between Louis and lestat and how toxic and abusive lestat is and how Louis continues it on to Claudia, I think the dynamic between them is very interesting. Overall I’d highly recommend this book if you have not read it, the dynamics of abuse and power struggles are very well explained through Louis, lestat and Claudia's relationship and how it’s continued on and it’s direct consequences. The descriptions are also extremely beautiful and I love the way Anne rice describes New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It’s so visceral and captivating, especially in the way she describes clothes. I also really like the way she describes certain areas as being like perfume and bringing back memories, it adds a unique way to describe nostalgia or deja vu without being super obvious but still can be understood. Overall I’d highly recommend anyone read this as I think everyone can get something from it and take something from it, whatever it be from the writing itself, descriptions or relationship dynamics.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism and Suicidal thoughts

phillyhufflepunk's review against another edition

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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood

Moderate: Misogyny, Stalking, Toxic friendship, Violence, Child death, Death of parent, Racism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Classism, Pedophilia, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Sexual content, Colonisation, Confinement, and Gore

Minor: Abandonment, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, and Mental illness

eauderat's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Grief, Child death, Gore, Blood, Cannibalism, Child abuse, and Colonisation

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Stalking, Pedophilia, Racism, Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, and Slavery

Minor: Classism, Death of parent, Dementia, and Sexism

nerdkitten's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Grief, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Child death, Kidnapping, Racism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Body horror, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Racial slurs, and Gore

Moderate: Mental illness, Terminal illness, Animal death, Death of parent, Sexual assault, Classism, Stalking, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Cursing, Gun violence, Self harm, Medical content, Sexism, Sexual content, Addiction, Dementia, Animal cruelty, Abandonment, Colonisation, Xenophobia, and Excrement

moreau's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

the only issues i have with this is louis's pretty underdeveloped and the series totally ditches him after this book, and anne rice loves to show off the fancy words she knows which means you get repetitive, abstract descriptions. constantly "armand is young and sexy" "claudia sounds like a silver bell" and she refuses to say chest. only bosom. loved it though

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pedophilia, Abandonment, Child death, Adult/minor relationship, Colonisation, Blood, Racism, Toxic relationship, and Animal death

jasminawithab's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

read this a few months ago and have not stopped thinking about it since. i regularly go back to reread certain passages and pages. 

claudia my beloved

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Toxic friendship, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Racism, Animal death, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Classism, Slavery, Abandonment, Suicidal thoughts, and Misogyny

sagetappe's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Child death, Violence, and Slavery

Minor: Pedophilia

uv_sensibility's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Stalking, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Incest, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Child death, Colonisation, Pedophilia, Grief, Racism, and Sexual content

morenowagain's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Racism, Pedophilia, and Slavery

emtees's review

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I read this book for the first time about twenty years ago.  After that, I read a lot more of the Vampire Chronicles books, until I sort of fell off from the series and the genre around the time Blood Canticle came out.  Some of them I’ve read multiple times, but Interview is not one of them, since I had a vague feeling of not liking that one was much.  But with the TV show now out, I figured I would revisit it.

I ended up enjoying this reread much more than I expected.  I had a vague sense of this book as being a slog compared to the others, but that wasn’t how I experienced it at all this time.  Instead I found myself really appreciating Rice’s use of language and setting and tone.  It is unquestionably a slow book, and a very internal book, and so it’s not going to appeal if you don’t like philosophical musings on the nature of evil and Catholic guilt and hallucinatory dream sequences that are never really explained and love letters to cities inserted directly into the narrative - in other worlds, if you don’t like Louis, the protagonist.  I like him a lot and so I really loved his story this time around.  You can see as you’re reading the way this book slots in between the horror-style view of vampires and the modern brooding tragic hero versions.  Louis is both a brooding tragic figure who doesn’t want to be a killer and a horror character who enjoys it and that works for me better than either of the other two options.

I also found it much more consistent with the later books than I thought it would be.  Rice famously wrote this as a stand-alone and then, when she expanded into a series, retconned some relationships and even whole scenes, with a sort of in-world explanation that Louis was an unreliable narrator.  And he definitely is - even within this book, its interesting to see the ways that comes across - but I was surprised that so many of the characters still feel like themselves from the later books.  I wasn’t really intending to but I think this is going to make me reread the whole series and I’m not sorry.

The one thing that is keeping me from giving this book a 5 star rating, though, is something that hasn’t… well, “aged well” isn’t really right, because the aging isn’t the problem.  The handling of race is bad in this book, no question.  It’s not a huge piece of the story, but its prominent in the first half and it’s an issue.  Louis is part of the weirdly extensive class of fictional vampires who started out plantation masters, but the problem here goes beyond a kind of “the times were different” handling of the subject.  Every mention of Black characters in this book comes across as fetishistic, and the fact that Louis never has any thoughts about the fact that he participated in slavery even centuries later - despite the fact that his entire story is otherwise about interrogating his own morality - is a very noticeable gap.  

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Child death, Toxic relationship, Pedophilia, and Slavery

A main character is a slave-owner, with no criticism of that in the book, and there is some racist language used. Basically every relationship, romantic or otherwise, is toxic. Child death/pedophilia warning:

One of the main characters is an adult vampire trapped in the body of a very young girl. A major part of the story is around her awareness of her state, including being sexually mature but not having a body to match. She has romantic feelings for an adult character and he expresses similar feelings, including attraction, to her, though he is also her father figure. There is no sexual content but there is sensual/erotic language used. All of this happens after she is emotionally and mentally an adult but the language does focus on her physicality as a child. She is eventually killed gruesomely.