Meet me in New Orleans:
A Critical Look

By Professor Vegas Dog

            I have never been a fan of vampire novels. Nevertheless, this book captured my interest and I had to keep reading until it was finished. In my opinion the writing doesn't focus on the vampire nature, the whole blood-sucking, heart-eating, evil vampires. No, instead this book focuses on Louis, a newly made vampire, who has his own personal demons to deal with and conquer.
            We learn early on in the book that Louis, the interviewee, is a tourtured soul. He had it all: Good looks, good life, lots of money, and family. That is, he had it until his brother died. Destroyed, Louis turns to the bottle. That is, he does until he meets Lestat, and Lestat makes him a vampire.
            The book moves on from there, examining Louis’s neurosis, from his refusal to drink from a human being, to his desperate searching for another he could connect with. Sometimes in reading my mind would leave my senses until I was no longer reading words, but hearing them told to me. As Louis’s days blured into weeks and years I could disappear into the story.
            Now when I say this it doesn’t mean I’m on acid. It means this is how engaging the writing is, how utterly entertaining it is to read. When someone asks you where you’ve been and you say Paris, then you have just read a good book. When I first picked up Interview with the Vampire and read the first page I remember snorting. Ya, right, I’m going to be interested in this! Then I read the second page, and the third page, and then I was becoming horrified when I saw what the vampire-child, Claudia, was becoming, and I remember seeing with the same horrified trance-like veil over my eyes that Louis look through when he wandered through the dim cavernous ballroom of the Théatre les Vampires. Ann Rice’s writing is truly engaging.
            I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good psychological look at human nature and how we handle things when put under preassure like killing people for survival. But hey, don’t take my word for it! Go check it out yourself!