At that time, a friend had loaned me the book to read. I was a huge Dark Shadows fan and this book was right up my alley - absolutely loved it!
Fast forward some 30 years later and I found myself with the desire to read a few of my favorite classics from my youth. Lo and behold, Interview with the Vampire was at the top of the list and I could not wait to purchase it for my Kindle and devour it once again.
The story is told from the point of view of the vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac. He details his life (both mortal and immortal) to a young reporter, leaving no stone unturned in outlining the graphic scenes that unfolded during his lifetime as a human and as a vampire.
In the beginning, Louis was a wealthy land owner in Louisiana in the eighteenth century when the vampire, Lestat, selfishly and for monetary gain makes Louis into a vampire. Louis was in mourning for his deceased brother and had lost his will to live. The opportunistic, Lestat, being the egocentric being that he is also wanted a companion to keep the loneliness of being an immortal vampire at bay. Lestat took advantage of this human weakness and Louis was forever bound to Lestat.
Although Lestat knew the ways of vampires, he was not willing to share his intimate knowledge of this with Louis and left him to work through the emotions and physical changes for himself. This left Louis with a love/hate relationship for Lestat.
After a night of frenzied feeding, Louis brings home a child named Claudia, whom he cannot leave to die. Again in his selfishness, Lestat does the unthinkable and makes the child into a vampire to keep Louis anchored to Louisiana and to Lestat.
Claudia will always have the body of a child, yet her mind and vampire nature would grow by leaps and bounds until she is mature beyond her human years. She grows to hate Lestat more than Louis does and ultimately tries to kill Lestat with the help of Louis.
After Louis and Claudia supposedly kill Lestat, they move to Paris as father and daughter, free from the clutches of Lestat. This is where they meet Armand, a four-hundred year old vampire who is the de-facto leader of a band of vampires. Armand wants Louis for his companion and stops at nothing to make this happen - including killing Claudia and bringing Lestat back into the picture.
At the end of the book, the reader is left with so many questions and an overwhelming need to know more about what happens to Louis after all of this. Thankfully, Rice continues the story in the next book of the series (The Vampire Chronicles) and will be releasing Prince Lestat in October 2014.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Interview with the Vampire for the second time and look forward to reading the rest of the series (again) prior to the release of Prince Lestat.
This is definitely a classic and still one of my all time favorite novels.
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