Anne Rice returns with The Wolf Gift
CBC News
Posted: Feb 14, 2012 2:35 PM ET
Last Updated: Feb 14, 2012 2:51 PM ET
After a decade away from the gothic fiction that vaulted her to fame, Anne Rice has returned to the genre with her new novel, The Wolf Gift.
However, the contemporary queen of gothic lit, horror and romance has traded vampires for werewolves in her latest effort to bring a classical monster into modern times. In The Wolf Gift, the protagonist is a 23-year-old reporter named Reuben Golding who is attacked by a strange beast while in northern California.
"Years ago, when I wrote Interview with a Vampire, there was a lot of ridicule, a lot of scorn. That was painful for me as a new novelist," she told CBC.
"I've written so many kinds of books, I don't care about anything like that anymore. I was ready to go back with a new confidence, a new assurance, a new passion for it really. It felt really good."
Although literary and cinematic predecessors typically depict the metamorphosis into a werewolf as a painful experience, Rice chose to portray it as a "sensuous, wonderful" transformation.
"I watched The Howling again. I watched American Werewolf in London. They present it as something painful, the transformation. I thought 'Why would this be painful?' That could feel really wonderful: to feel every follicle as every hair emerges, to feel this increase in power and strength, to feel a desire suddenly not just to walk, but to spring forward and to run. I mean, think how great that would be."
The New Orleans novelist talks to Radio-Canada's Kevin Sweet about her new confidence and voice, her devotion to her faith and struggles with Christianity and how her past experiences inform her new work.
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