It has been a while since I’ve read any Anne Rice novels. I loved Interview with the Vampire and still think it is a masterpiece and a brilliant novel of faith, a crie de couer that worked through the death of a child and the resulting emotions. Despite flashes, such as Cry to Heaven and beginning of the Mayfair Witches, the succeeding books failed to live up to that original promise. Ploughing the same furrow yielded paler results.
Angel Time: The Songs Of The Seraphim
In Angel Time Toby O’Dare, a contract killer, finds himself being used as the ball park when he begins to have doubts about his profession. An angel begins to place his own thoughts and feelings into a historical context by comparing him with the treatment of the Medieval Jews in Norwich. In this story, Rice reflects Abelard and Eloise though the love affair is split between Christianity and Judaism.
All the parties need to find a way of reconciling themselves with their faith. Anne Rice has posted an essay on her site called “Essay on Earlier Works“, she writes that she has had emails regarding the:
the value of “dark stories,” and as to why I don’t, as a Christian, renounce works that include witches and vampires and other elements of the supernatural.
That apparent lack of understanding of one of the central conceits of Horror by some of her readers / correspondents, that it is inherently evil, is worrying and I’m not sure that Rice really gets to the heart of this in the essay. It is a central part of her writing and, apart from the books about Christ, always has been that the vampires, witches and so on are reaching towards personal salvation and sometimes self-understanding. Catholicism is a strong part of her writing and always will be and in Angel Time, Rice appears to be meditating on this rather than the pell-mell rush which put me off reading her.
I’ll be interested in seeing if Rice keeps the story simple and works through the issues completely or if she starts mixing in her other universes into it (I really hope not).