Has this been discussed- Anne Rice

[Vorian's_Leronica]

I just read an article about Anne Rice and her new book Christ the Lord:Out of Egypt.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9785289/site/newsweek/

Apparently she has gone from writing about vampires and witches and erotica to writing about god. That's quite a turnaround.


I loved the first few vampire chronicles, big fan of lestat but after Memnoch the Devil it all seemed to go downhill. The last one I read and liked was Blood and Gold and then I gave up.

What do you all think of this change?

[greenbunny]

I really don't see it as a huge change the way everyone is saying. She's always been obsessed with religion and immortality. Lestat and Louis are constantly pondering what they are missing by never dying, and whether it's worth it. She did seem to lose her train of though after MtD, when she started combining the Mayfairs and Lestat. But overall I don't think it's as big of a leap as critics are saying. I do think she's always been heavily influenced by Michelle's death, and has snowballed her obsession with mortality and the nature of the divine.

FWIW, I got the chance to work on the proofs of Blackwood Farm (back when I worked for a compositor) and I really didn't care for the edits that Knopf called for. They cut a lot of enjoyable dialogue. I'm wondering if her writing has really changed all that much, or if she's just been assigned new editors in the past few years.

[SierraStar]

Well, seeing as Anne Rice was raised a Catholic and that she has experienced some life changing epsidoes over the last few years (the death of her beloved husband , a diabetic coma and burst appendix, gastric bypass surgery, surgery for an intestinal blockage and moving out of her home in New Orleans) I can see her "changing direction" in her writings.
She did return to Catholicism in '98, so it's not as if she just wrote the book because of the current popularity of religious books.
After all, her last vampire novel Blood Canticle came out in 2003, after she returned to the Church.
But even though now that she is writing about Jesus and not Lestat, I still have a sense that she has been writing about the same thing all along.

[Katy]

I agree in that I don't think this book is really all that much "new" territory for her. Her vampire books were all closely related to religion, heaven, hell and death. To say nothing of the fact that she merged the two "territories" in MtD, so to speak. I also think it has a lot to do with her upbringing (as well as her recent medical challenges, life changes and her return to the Church), she was raised a Catholic, lived in a Catholic city, and wrote about touches of the Church in all her books (okay, maybe not in the erotica).

I can't say I'll be reading it though. I lost interest in the Lestat books right around Memnoch. My favorites of hers were the Mayfair Witches and Feast of All Saints.

[Asha]

has anybody actually read this book?

[mel_hams]

Our preacher just talked about this this morning. He said that God spoke to her during a church service and she said from that moment on she was not going to write about anything other than God/Jesus. He said that the critics have really been horrible to her. On a side note, he also said that her husband of I think 41 years. recently passed away.

[BigHog]

I haven't read it yet but hope too. I loved the Mayfair Witches series, but not the vampire ones. I also heard that her daughter died very young of leukemia (I think), which played a large role in her obsession with immortality.

[justHB]

I don't think I'm going to read it. I used to be a huge Anne Rice fan but have not been moved at all by her last three or four books.

[rebeccasmommy]

I bought it and am planning to read it whenever I get a chance. I'm finishing a trilogy (The Bartimaeus Trilogy - YA fiction) and will either start this one or another. I haven't decided yet. I've always enjoyed Anne Rice, and have read many of the books she published as Anne Rampling or A. N. Roquelaure, but do agree that after a while it seemed like she was totally stretching for material.

[greenbunny]

I also heard that her daughter died very young of leukemia (I think), which played a large role in her obsession with immortality.

Yes, that was Michelle. Rice has admitted that Claudia (the child vampire) was partly intended to help her deal with that. I wrote my thesis about that whole thing, it's actually quite fascinating.

And her husband Stan Rice died a while ago actually, in 2002. I believe she said that was partly why she left New Orleans.