Heather's Reviews > Interview with the Vampire

In honor of the passing of Anne Rice, I decided to reread my childhood favorite Interview with the Vampire. I will not describe the premise of this book here because unless you've been living under a rock for almost half a century (yes, the book was published 45 years ago in 1976), you should already have an idea of the infamous characters that are Lestat, Louis, and Claudia.

I first read Rice's Gothic vampire tale as a preteen, sometime in the mid-to-late 90s. I found it in my mom's piles of books, as she loved to read (and still does) and no book was off limit to me, even as child. I became obsessed with vampires and wholly engrossed in vampire fiction and literature that has since carried over into my adult years.

Her Vampire Chronicles series were probably the first truly adult books I read as an 11 and 12 year old. They bridged the awkward gap between my childhood and teenage years, looking for something more than Goosebumps and Nancy Drew. Even though the books are adult fiction, I realized that I am not the only person with this experience. After learning of Rice's death, I found a Reddit thread on r/books that announced her death and thousands of other readers of Rice shared the same experience as I did: we read Rice and her vampire stories at very young ages and for many of us, they stayed with us well into adulthood.

While Gothic vampire fiction is not for everyone, it's undeniable the legacy Rice leaves behind. After Dracula, I can't think of another novelist who brought the vampire genre to the forefront of pop culture in my lifetime (sorry, Stephanie Meyers).

"Thank you for introducing us to a world in which vampires weren’t simply Dracula, but literary springboards for everything that makes us hungry for immortality, desperate for love, longing for legacy, and searching for humanity.” - Josh Gad

Anne Rice: 1941 - 2021