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Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding stoyrtelling, Anne Rice makes real a family of witches—a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philsophy, a family that is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous and seductive being.
"Unfolds like a poisonous lotus blossom redolent with luxurious evil."
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
The blockbuster that spent three months on the New York Times bestseller list is now in trade paper format. The Witching Hour reveals Anne Rice at her most sensual and accessible, in a grand saga as much about love as alchemy, family secrets as the occult. "(A) huge, sprawling tale of horror."--Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review.
Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire, she said later, "without ever realizing I was writing about loss. I was writing about my daughter's loss [Rice's daughter died in 1972]. And I was writing about my loss of Catholic faith long before that, because I had lost my faith in the year 1960, when I first went to college."
After her first book, Rice continued to write about loss -- and about vampires, witches and demons -- for more than 25 years. She also wrote, under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure, the Beauty series, an erotic retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty; writing as Anne Rampling, she published two other novels, Exit to Eden and Belinda.
But it is as the queen of gothic fiction that Anne Rice's fans know her best. Her fans are passionate about her, and she returns the sentiment, e-mailing tirelessly with them and occasionally posting on their blogs. She also adores communing with them in person on book tours: "They give me personal, priceless and unforgettable feedback and verification of what I have achieved for them in my books," she once explained in a Salon interview.
After Blood Canticle was released in 1993, her readers, accustomed to an output of one book a year, kept asking her what was coming next. "And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'," she said in a Newsweek interview.
They were in for a surprise. In 1998, Rice had returned to the Roman Catholic Church, and in 2005 she published Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, a novel about the childhood of Jesus, narrated by himself.
"It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming announced that he'd been born again," wrote David Gates in Newsweek.
But as Rice sees it, Christ the Lord represents the fulfillment of a longing that has been in her books, and in her soul, all along.
"This subject is in no way a departure from that of my previous works; no one who knows my work could possibly think so," she said in a Q&A on her publisher's Web site. "The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis's quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing ‘immortal' simply to ask ‘What is the meaning of what we are?' I was always compelled to seek the ‘big answers.'"
Christ the Lord received mixed reviews, but many critics were as impressed with the book's style as its ambitious subject matter. "Rice's book is a triumph of tone -- her prose lean, lyrical, vivid -- and character," noted Kirkus Reviews. Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times Book Review: "Even in biblical times and in the Holy Land, Rice retains her obsessions with ritual and purification, with lavish detail and gaudy decor. But she writes this book in a simpler, leaner style, giving it the slow but inexorable rhythm of an incantation. The restraint and prayerful beauty of Christ the Lord is apt to surprise her usual readers and attract new ones."
Some of those usual readers, of course, are now wondering whether she will write any more vampire novels. Will the vampire Lestat ever return?
Anne's response, from her publisher's Web site: "I can't see myself doing that. My vampires were metaphors for the outsiders, the lost, the wanderers in the darkness who remembered the warmth of God's light but couldn't find it. My wish to explore that is gone now. I want to meet a much bigger challenge."
"My first job was as a cafeteria waitress at a Walgreen's cafeteria over the drugstore on Canal and Baronne Street in New Orleans when I was sixteen years old. What a plunge into reality. Canal Street was then the only downtown in town. And I was in fact a boarding school student and unbeknownst to the principal, Sr. Felix, took this job on weekends. When she found out, she did not approve of a St. Joseph's Academy girl being a waitress. I was undeterred. I had discovered that I could turn time into money. I never forgot that lesson. The crashing boredom of childhood was over!"
"I was employed from then on a shocking variety of low level jobs, including grill cook at a huge downtown cafeteria in San Francisco. I had to be there at 5:00 a.m., and once while I was en route on a bus, a drunken man fell asleep against me. The conductor had to wake him up for me to get off, poor guy. I think he'd staggered out of an after hours club. I was a crack waitress, a receptionist, a claims examiner, a theatre usherette in a big Cinerama house, and must have seen It's Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World over one hundred times while standing there with a flashlight. My last job in the straight world -- after motherhood -- was that of proofreader for a law book company. I hated it. Then my devoted husband Stan, who was already teaching and had been for some time, said, 'Stay home and write, I believe in you.' And I wrote Interview with the Vampire."
"I was a painfully slow reader. Never really read a novel for pure pleasure until I was 35. It was Ordinary People by Judith Guest. Thought it very good."
"How do I unwind? There are different levels to unwind. The primo way for me is to read history or some form of involving scholarship. A good book on an obscure subject. The recent bestseller Krakatoa by Simon Winchester was a wonderful example! That's a delicious unwind book. And there are others out there like that. The British writers seem especially good at it. But I can't get enough on how or why the Roman Empire fell. That's my idea of a good evening. To be in Florida with the deck door open to the roar of the waves, and a good book open to pages on the decline of paganism."
"But! There is another kind of unwind. The gripping fiction bestseller that takes two days. The Da Vinci Code is a good example. Every now and then I have time for that. I was smiling all the way through it. At one time in my life, I had read everything I could find on the Knights Templar (see First Way to Unwind, above), and on Opus Dei, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and so I was just tickled by what the author did with the material. And of course, I couldn't stop reading. Such cleverness, such a puzzle and right up to the last page."
"Interest and hobbies: well, my interests are pretty much literary, except for maintaining two pre-Civil War houses in New Orleans (both family homes, one used for Mardi Gras season entertaining), and then I do devote some attention to my doll collection, which includes a small assortment of French antique dolls -- but this part of my life is drawing to a close. I am divesting myself of possessions rather than acquiring them. I am decorating, yes, and redecorating, but cutting down on the area, and the amount of things I have to maintain. I've let go of my huge property, St. Elizabeth's Orphanage -- a monster building which used to house my doll collection and so many other things. It was the fulfillment of dreams for about 10 years for me and so many other people. Weddings, book signings, book parties, benefits, fundraisers -- all kinds of events were held there. We even hosted President Clinton there. But that chapter of my life is over. For those ten years I asked 'what if?' many times. And I found out and as the result I am a satisfied person and a happy one. But it's over."
"I guess you could call my cats a hobby. I have five of them, all Siberians and very lovable and demanding and sweet. They are keepers certainly. Other than that, I don't know that I have hobbies so much as passions, and my passions center around my writing."
"My only other diversion of late is seeing that The Witching Hour will soon be made into a television limited series -- that is, a mini-series that will extend over 10 hours. The scripts that have been written by writer-producer John Wilder are very simply wonderful -- profoundly faithful to the material and the characters. Our producer, Mark Wolper, is extraordinarily dedicated and we have the network behind us. It looks very good."
"Other news looming is that Elton John and Rob Roth are making a musical based on the Vampire Chronicles for Broadway. I've talked to Elton John several times. He's absolutely charming. I've heard the first five songs, performed by him, and they were great. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics, and will write the lyrics for all. The other people involved have top credits. The treatment I read was a wonder -- very true to the books, quite terrific. My conversation with Rob Roth was very exciting."
"What I've learned from both these experiences so far -- the television series and the Broadway production -- is that the passion of people makes all the difference in the world. And sometimes it is the passion of a few key people that moves a project forward. Sometimes one person alone goes to the hard work of getting everybody else together, and making the studio that owns the underlying rights respond. People who love the work, who want to make something of it, can be brought together by that one key person. That one key person has to believe that past disappointments or failed connections don't mean anything. When you have that sort of person, something can happen."
"I've also learned that the author of the books usually can't do it. Not unless she wants to stop being an author altogether and move to L.A. or N.Y. and become a producer."
The doctor woke up afraid. He had been dreaming of the old house in New Orleans again. He had seen the woman in the rocker. He'd seen the man with the brown eyes.
And even now in this quiet hotel room above New York City he felt the old alarming disorientation. He'd been talking again with the brown-eyed man. Yes, help her. No, this is just a dream. I want to get out of it.
The doctor sat up in bed. No sound but the faint roar of the air conditioner. Why was he thinking about it tonight in a hotel room at the Parker Meridien? For a moment he couldn't shake the feeling of the old house. He saw the woman again—her bent head, her vacant stare. He could almost hear the hum of the insects against the screen in the old porch. And the brown-eyed man was speaking without moving his lips. A waxen dummy infused with life—
No, stop it.
He got out of bed and padded silently across the carpeted floor until he stood in front of the sheer white curtains, peering out at black sooty rooftops and dim neon signs flickering against brick walls. The early morning light showed behind the clouds above the dull concrete façade opposite. No debilitating heat here. No drowsing scent of roses, of gardenias.
Gradually his head cleared.
He thought of the Englishman at the bar in the lobby again. That's what had brought it all back—the Englishman remarking to the bartender than he'd just come from New Orleans, and that certainly was a haunted city. The Englishman, an affable man, a true Old World gentleman it seemed, in a narrow seersucker suit with a gold watch chain fixed to his vest pocket. Where did one see that kind of man these days?—a man with the sharp melodious inflection of a British stage actor, and brilliant, ageless blue eyes.
The doctor had turned to him and said: "Yes, you're right about New Orleans, you certainly are. I saw a ghost myself in New Orleans, and not very long ago—" Then he had stopped, embarrassed. He had stared at the melted bourbon before him, the sharp refraction of light in the base of the crystal glass.
Hum of flies in summer; smell of medicine. That much Thorazine? Could there be some mistake?
But the Englishman had been respectfully curious. He'd invited the doctor to join him for dinner, said he collected such tales. For a moment, the doctor had been tempted. There was a lull in the convention, and he liked this man, felt an immediate trust in him. And the lobby of the Parker Meridien was a nice cheerful place, full of light, movement, people. So far away from that gloomy New Orleans corner, from the sad old city festering with secrets in its perpetual Caribbean heat.
But the doctor could not tell his story.
"If you ever change your mind, do call me," the Englishman had said. "My name is Aaron Lightner." He'd given the doctor a card with the name of an organization inscribed on it: "You might say we collect ghost stories—true ones, that is."
The Talamasca
We watch
And we are always here.
It was a curious motto.
Yes, that was what had brought it all back. The Englishman and that peculiar calling card with the European phone numbers, the Englishman who was leaving for the Coast tomorrow to see a California man who had lately drowned and been brought back to life. The doctor had read of that case in the New York papers—one of those characters who suffers clinical death and returns after having seen "the light."
They had talked about the drowned man together, he and the Englishman. "He claims now to have psychic powers, you see," said the Englishman, "and that interests us, of course. Seems he sees images when he touched things with his bare hands. We call it psychometry."
The doctor had been intrigued. He had heard of a few such patients himself, cardiac victims if he rightly recalled, who had come back, claiming to have seen the future. "Near Death Experience." One saw more and more articles about the phenomenon in the journals.
"Yes," Lightner had said, "the best research on the subject has been done by doctors—by cardiologists."
"Wasn't there a film a few years back," the doctor had asked, "about a woman who returned with the power to heal? Strangely affecting."
"You're open-minded on the subject," the Englishman had said with a delighted smile. Are you sure you won't tell me about your ghost? I'd so love to hear it. I'm not flying out till tomorrow, sometime before noon. What I wouldn't give to hear your story!"
No, not that story. Not ever.
Alone now in the shadowy hotel room, the doctor felt fear again. The clock ticked in the long dusty hallway in New Orleans. He heard the shuffle of his patient's feet as the nurse "walked" her. He smelled that smell again of a New Orleans house in the summer, heat and old wood. The man was talking to him—
The doctor had never been inside an antebellum mansion until that spring in New Orleans. And the old house rally did have white fluted columns on the front, though the paint was peeling away. Greek Revival style they called it—a long violet-gray town house on a dark shady corner in the Garden District, its front gate guarded it seemed by two enormous oaks. The iron lace railings were made in a rose pattern and much festooned with vines—purple wisteria, the yellow Virginia creeper, and bougainvillea of a dark, incandescent pink.
He liked to pause on the marble steps and look up at the Doric capitals, wreathed as they were by those drowsy fragrant blossoms. The sun came in thin dusty shafts through the twisting branches. Bees sang in the tangle of brilliant green leaves beneath the peeling cornices. Never mind that it was so somber here, so damp.
Even the approach through the deserted streets seduced him. He walked slowly over cracked and uneven sidewalks of herringbone brick or gray flagstone, under an unbroken archway of oak branches, the light eternally dappled, the sky perpetually veiled in green. Always he paused at the largest tree that had lifted the iron fence with its bulbous roots. He could not have gotten his arms around the trunk of it. It reached all the way from the pavement to the house itself, twisted limbs clawing at the shuttered windows beyond the banisters, leaves enmeshed with the flowering vines.
But the decay here troubled him nevertheless. Spiders wove their tiny intricate webs over the iron lace roses. In places the iron had so rusted that it fell away to powder at the touch. And here and there near the railings, the wood of the porches was rotted right through.
Then there was the old swimming pool far beyond the garden—a great long octagon bounded by the flagstones, which had become a swamp unto itself with its black water and wild irises. The smell alone was frightful. Frogs lived there, frogs you could hear at dusk, singing their grinding, ugly song. Sad to see the little fountain jets up one side and down the other still sending their little arching streams into the muck. He longed to drain it, clean it, scrub the sides with his own hands if he had to. Longed to patch the broken balustrade, and rip the weeds from the overgrown urns.
Even the elderly aunts of his patient—Miss Carl, Miss Millie, and Miss Nancy—had an air of staleness and decay. It wasn't a matter of gray hair or wire-rimmed glasses. It was their manner, and the fragrance of camphor that clung to their clothes.
Once he had wandered into the library and taken a book down from the shelf. Tiny black beetles scurried out of the crevice. Alarmed he had put the book back.
If there had been air-conditioning in the place it might have been different. But the old house was too big for that—or so they had said back then. The ceilings soared fourteen feet overhead. And the sluggish breeze carried with it the scent of mold.
His patient was well cared for, however. That he had to admit. A sweet old black nurse named Viola brought his patient out on the screened porch in the morning and took her in at evening.
"She's no trouble at all, Doctor. Now, you come on, Miss Deirdre, walk for the doctor." Viola would lift her out of the chair and push her patiently step by step.
"I've been with her seven years now, Doctor, she's my sweet girl."
Seven years like that. No wonder the old woman's feet had started to turn in at the ankles, and her arms to draw close to her chest if the nurse didn't force them down into her lap again.
Viola would walk her round and round the long double parlor, past the harp and the Bosendorfer grand layered with dust. Into the long broad dining room with its faded murals of moss-hung oaks and tilled fields.
Slippered feet shuffling on the worn Aubusson carpet. The woman was forty-one years old, yet she looked both ancient and young—a stooped and pale child, untouched by adult worry or passion. Deirdre, did you ever have a lover? Did you ever dance in that parlor?
I cannot praise Anne Rice and this book enough. There is such a volume of literary wealth in Anne Rice's being that I cannot imagine even a small portion of it. With Anne Rice it seems she has lived more than one lifetime with the novels she has written and the subject matter. I have been reading a long, long time and I do not know of another writer that even comes close to Ms Rice. I know she cannot go on forever (and neither can I) but I do hope I live long enough for another series. It is an absolute pleasure to read her writing (actually no matter what it is).
6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 5, 2008
The Witching Hour is absolutely amazing. I could not put it down. I could barely get myself to do anything else other than find out what happened next. Each page drew me in, increased my heart rate, and intensified my breathing. The family history is extraordinarily compelling. This is my favorite Anne Rice book.
6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.As a kid, I grew up reading Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and was always somewhat hesitant to read the Mayfair Witches books because of Rice's love of overly detailed tangents that really don't go anywhere (as was the case with most of "Tale of the Body Thief"). Now, twenty years later, I decided to take the plunge into this tome on my Nook Color.
Dear God...after all those years, I was right to be hesitant. The first book in the series enters into the realm of being almost unbearable in the second section of the book, and continues on until the third and final section, the vast majority of which actually serves as a lengthy and convoluted "reprinting" of a book within a book, as we read of the ENTIRE history of the Mayfair Witches. Kill...me...now...
For those of you who enjoy the comfort of a root canal, this book will be a cinch. Even in Nook Book format, it took me three weeks to finish, and that was after skimming over most of the massively boring second section.
The second book in the series, "Lasher," is actually quite a great deal better in terms of the pacing, though it is reminiscent of "Queen of the Damned" with its cast of thousands. It's a far more enjoyable read than the first book, and serves as less of a cure for my chronic insomnia.
5 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 19, 2010
I Also Recommend:
The Mayfair Witches series books are absolute page-turners from start to finish. You literally feel like you are transported to Louisiana and are walking through all the history with the characters. I have never been so captivated by a book and so disappointed when I was through reading it. However, you can definitely read this book over and over again.
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 20, 2010
Nothing touches the characters, intensity and suspense in this Rice novel in any of her others. I think this was written at her peak.
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 30, 2010
This was my favorite of Anne Rice's books. I have read it twice and recommend it to friends. I wish she would continue the story...I'd be first in line (with many others) to buy the next in series
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 15, 2012
I found this book long and boring
2 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 14, 2012
Too over detailed and melodramatic!
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 14, 2012
I recommend this book all the time. The whole series is excellent
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 16, 2012
I 1st read this when I was 18, I' m 31 now and its just as good! All 3 books are wonderful. Anne Rice draws a wonder pic of now and the past. You love and hate (sometimes both lol) this family ( and ghost). I have tried to read the vampire books and never really got into them but The Mayfair Witches put a spell on me ;)
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 7, 2012
I feel like I'm part of the family
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 5, 2012
I never tire of it. Reading the series for the fifth time.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 8, 2011
A long and odd story which seems to be broken, roughly, into three sections: an introductory set-up, a remarkably long and not entirely useful historical explanation, and a choppy, disappointing conclusion. Overall, a bit of a disappointment, except for the wonderfullly atmospheric descriptions of New Orleans and San Francisco.
Not sure I would recommend it. Sure wouldn't recommend buying it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 9, 2011
A little long and slightly slow in the middle (the history) but really well written! Anne Rice at her best!
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I am a huge Anne Rice fan- I have every book she's written. I personally feel this is her best book. The history is very rich and the characters are so well developed it's hard not to become engrossed in it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 21, 2010
I've loved Rice's Mayfair Witches trilogy since their original release. I've been desperate for electronic versions so I can "downsize" my personal library. I'm ecstatic to see the Mayfair Witches and many of the Vampire Chronicles in ebook format now. Random House has made my Christmas wish come true.
"The Witching Hour" is an incredibly subtle book. A New Orleans native, Anne Rice spins the novel with a slow-paced, insidious glamor. Seductive and decadent, appalling and terrifying, the saga of this unique family slips off the page and into the psyche. This is a series for readers who love to experience detailed immersion into their reading experience.
Local color plays a vivid role in setting and atmosphere. I'm a New Orleans local and Rice's description and use of setting is very effective and genuine.
Is the novel long? Yes. Open-ended? Yes. The pleasure in these books is in experiencing the opulent details and decadent history, not in crossing Point A to Point B.
I consider the Mayfair Witches Series superior to Rice's more popular Vampire Chronicles in terms of quality and creative content. I've never read anything else quite like them. I recommend these books to anyone who loves good, solid escapist reading within the paranormal genre. Folks interested in New Orleans would also love it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I've always loved Anne Rice novels and I was not disappointed with this one. It was just a little overwhelming at times because there is so much information in this book to have to take in. I don't know how she put together the history of the Mayfair family. It was an amazing history going back to Scotland of the 1600's, generation-by-generation, to present day. The attention to detail of the locations and the characters easily lends to feeling like you are time traveling and experiencing everything in person. After reading this family history, you have a very good understanding of the present day characters and the part they have to play in each others lives. Everything is wonderfully interconnected. A very good read.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 28, 2004
Despite the strong and interesting beginning, The Witching Hour was a painful read. I made it to approximately page 500 and realized that I had become very bored. Then I took into consideration that I had roughly 500+ more pages to go. I decided to stop reading it. The story, while very well conceived, became dryly written and immobile. And the amount of detail in this book is quintessentially EXCESSIVE. I have read quite a few reviews that site Rice's writing style as being the flaw with this book. I don't think her style is necessarily a 'flaw', because a few parts are beautifully written. The 'flaw' is that The Witching Hour is profusely detailed and incredibly long. So if you are a patient person and would enjoy a book that is tantamount to an emotional history book about a family of witches, then this is the book for you. However, if you are looking for a concise book of at least reasonable length and momentum, consider yourself forewarned because I do not recommend this book for you.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 23, 2013
Very long, drawn out and wordy. Too much back story.
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Posted April 19, 2013
I couldn't get into the book. It's long and boring. Also the fact the chapters keep jumping from different characters is confusing. I love Anne Rice but really didn't like this book
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Overview
Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding stoyrtelling, Anne Rice makes real a family of witches—a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philsophy, a family that is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous and seductive being.
"Unfolds like a poisonous lotus blossom redolent with luxurious evil."
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
The blockbuster that spent three months on the New York Times...