Louis' Long and Laborious Lengthy Tale of Woes and Angst Muffinry

       I really loved the way “Interview with a Vampire” was written, though it was a little hard to get into at first. The beginning was really slow and a lot of Louis's descriptions were extremely long winded. I found myself seriously bored with the long winded description of New Orleans, traveling of Louis and Claudia in Europe, and Louis' repetitive angsty moaning about how no one understood him. I thought it was really interesting that once they got to Paris, Louis's musings switched entirely to the description of Armand. I think this really showed just how much Armand meant to Louis in terms of how their minds were alike. I really liked the relationships between the characters like Armand and Louis' bond. But on another note, there was so much man slash in this book. And it totally was ridiculous at some point I would have to put it down and start laughing historically with my roommate who has also read the series. Sometimes it did seem to be just Armand and Louis staring at each other forever and I was just leafing through it a bit thinking “When is something going to actually happen?!"

          Louis and Claudia's bond in particular caught me in particular and how they stayed together even though they were almost complete opposites. This is exemplified by little remarks on things that they don't see eye to eye where Claudia believes “Fire purifies” while Louis believes “...fire just destroys”. Claudia really manipulates Louis throughout the book with her . I think Louis becomes knowledgeable of this but he stays with her regardless even when he fears for himself. He stays with her even when the actor vampires threaten to attack and when he fears Claudia herself. This is reflected in Louis' musings where he thinks “would I awake, like Gulliver awake, to find myself bound hand and foot, an unwelcoming giant..?”

            After Louis turned Madeleine everything seemed to rush downhill from there. I couldn't put the book down after that. Louis' claim that “What has died in this room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human...” seemed to spark the beginning of the end of his joys of life. I thought it was strange how the two people who meant the most to him at that time, Armand and Claudia, both led to his downfall.

           I thought the ending was a bit bitter. It just seemed strange to end it with Louis totally estranged from, life in general, that he had lost all connection with the world. It was like he was now a total robot who had detached himself to the point where he decided he didn't want to care for any one or anything anymore. I thought it was kind of ironic the only thing he decided to hold onto was his belief that life was precious even though he decided to still live on killing after all this time and all this regret as some sort of final retribution.