Interview with the Vampire

By: Anne Rice

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a magnificent, compulsively readable thriller...Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth—the education of the vampire” (Chicago Tribune). • The inspiration for the hit television series

The time is now.

We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks--as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . .

He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently . . . carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir--young, romantic, cultivated--to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the "endless," life . . . learning first to sustain himself on the blood of cocks and rats caught in the raffish streets of New Orleans, then on the blood of human beings . . . to the years when, moving away from his final human ties under the tutelage of the hated yet necessary Lestat, he gradually embraces the habits, hungers, feelings of vampirism: the detachment, the hardened will, the "superior" sensual pleasures.

He carries us back to the crucial moment in a dark New Orleans street when he finds the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her, struggling against the last residue of human feeling within him . . .

We see how Claudia in turn is made a vampire--all her passion and intelligence trapped forever in the body of a small child--and how they arrive at their passionate and dangerous alliance, their French Quarter life of opulence: delicate Grecian statues, Chinese vases, crystal chandeliers, a butler, a maid, a stone nymph in the hidden garden court . . . night curving into night with their vampire senses heightened to the beauty of the world, thirsting for the beauty of death--a constant stream of vulnerable strangers awaiting them below . . .

We see them joined against the envious, dangerous Lestat, embarking on a perilous search across Europe for others like themselves, desperate to discover the world they belong to, the ways of survival, to know what they are and why, where they came from, what their future can be . . .

We follow them across Austria and Transylvania, encountering their kind in forms beyond their wildest imagining . . . to Paris, where footsteps behind them, in exact rhythm with their own, steer them to the doors of the Théâtre des Vampires--the beautiful, lewd, and febrile mime theatre whose posters of penny-dreadful vampires at once mask and reveal the horror within . . . to their meeting with the eerily magnetic Armand, who brings them, at last, into intimacy with a whole brilliant and decadent society of vampires, an intimacy that becomes sudden terror when they are compelled to confront what they have feared and fled . . .

In its unceasing flow of spellbinding storytelling, of danger and flight, of loyalty and treachery, Interview with the Vampire bears witness of a literary imagination of the first order.

©1976 Anne Rice (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"[A] magnificent, compulsively readable thriller...Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth - the education of the vampire.” (Chicago Tribune)

“Unrelentingly erotic...sometimes beautiful, and always unforgettable.” (Washington Post)

“If you surrender and go with her...you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream.” (Boston Globe)

Captivating

Loved It! The narrator kept me captivated with the story! I've seen the movie several times, but this was the first time I actually got through the book in it's entirety and I enjoyed it!

wonderful. better than I remember.

entrapment. perfection. don't hesitate to listen. off to get Lestat right away. can't wait to listen.

Great Interduction

I read this book years ago, Its a great introduction to the world of vampires in Anne Rices imagination. I recommend this book, the audio was superb and kept you interested in what was happening next.

Anne Rice fan for ever

I have read every single one of her books as they came out. (00ps lie; couldn’t get into the Sleeping Beauty series). Can’t wait to listen to them all again.

Great Story!

I loved the readers voice and execution. This has been a great read for me and has inspired me in my own creative writing style.

I Should Have Read This Sooner

I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and complexity of this story and its characters. If you've seen the movie then you've only seen a brief shadow of the real story. Highly recommended.

Fantastic!

The narrator was perfect for this story. I loved every minute of it! Off to listen to The Vampire Lestat next

you could hear the vampire on the readers teeth!

I'll listen to it again and again. Such succulent art, in the writing and the narrative.

LISTEN. I BEG YOU

This is the best book I have ever read or listened to in my entire life. That is all.

Vampire

I enjoyed this book very much, moved smoothly and easy to stay with the story.The narrator was easy to listen to and spoke as I would expect a Vampire to speak without being over dramatic .I would recommend it