The Witching Hour
Anne Rice
995 pages, read it in paperback.
This was a suggestion from a co-worker who has great taste in books. I have only ever read two books by the notable miss Rice. Those being Interview with the Vampire and Memnoch the Devil, both being enjoyable reads. Why not give this a chance? I have to say that I really did not know what to expect. The Vampire Chronicles are well known and not liked by everyone. In fact as I was apt to read this at bars, the lunchroom, or at coffee shops, and received many a look as if to say 'Oh, a man reading Anne Rice.' Still I persevered.
Anne Rice has been writing and publishing books for so long and with such success that she is one of the few writers that can claim to have sold nearly 100 million books, which is no small accomplishment. She was born with the given name Howard, which I personally find hilarious but wish no hurt upon her as it was obvious that she had no choice in the matter. None the less, she was born in the Irish Channel of New Orleans. New Orleans would of course become the backbone of most of her stories, and while I have never been there, I hear that it is a place of great taboo and mystery, further enriched by Miss Rice's descriptions of the buildings, weather, people, and climate. A place of magic during the day and potentially frightening darkness at night. She would inevitably move to Texas after her mothers death and later San Francisco in pursuit of work. She was actually living in the Haight-Ashburry district for the birth and life of the Hippie Movement. She of course would go on to write and publish 'Interview With the Vampire' to much acclaim before purchasing another house in New Orleans and moving there from her home in San Francisco. This house than would spur her to write the book I am reviewing here today, and the story of 'The Witching Hour'.
'The Witching Hour' is a ponderous work, much like all of her stories. The copy in front of me sits at over 950 pages, while I have heard that the subsequent publications have made the page count closer to 1200. This being the story of the Mayfair Witches. The story starts out with brief introductions to several key characters, accounts of the strange family by it's attendants, and a growing story that reads much like a ghost story. As the story escalates and the characters and events begin to intertwine, we are whisked away to a roughly 400 page summarization of the Mayfair family starting in the 1600's. The summarization is widely handled as a file which posses first hand accounts, letters, eye witness's to events, and general inquires. While I thought that the work would lose steam or even my interest, I personally found that this had the exact opposite effect. Most of the first hand accounts detail interactions with the family that are eerie or with the denizen that compromises the hauntings. It was enjoyable for me to read and provides an amazing back drop for the story, if you are patient enough. Once you get through that you go through some completions so that the story can catch up and move some hurdles along after the rather large pause. The 'catch-up' drones a little and seems rather unimportant at times. It seemed to me that she was in the middle of making a decision as a writer. Should she wrap up the work in this one volume and move to something else or drag this out into a series? It appears she chose series.
While the other two are smaller, weighing in at 640 pages for the sequel Lasher and a modest 576 pages for the finisher, Taltos. I don't know that I will be reading them anytime soon. The majesty of the story for me came at the recollection of the family and how it wound up, not necessarily how it wound down.
For anyone wishing to pick up any Anne Rice book, please remember that she had a foray into erotic fiction and this very much bleeds into all of her works in both the telling of her characters, and most certainly sex. Expect the graphic and expect the perfect man. What I mean by that is to expect him to be emotional when the female characters need him to be and that he will always be tantalizing and perfect to her. I think this exactly is the reason I was often scoffed at by males as they saw me with the book as most men are easily able to dismiss it for a women's demographic. In a way, I can't say they are wrong but I enjoyed it for what it was.
