Per Christopher Rice’s Facebook post on Anne Rice’s personal page, that’s what her younger sister, Karen, said to her after saying her final goodbyes when she died of complications resulting from a stroke over the weekend. I wrote that line at the top of this week’s page in my little agenda planner. It really was quite a wild ride—one that helped shape so many aspects of my identity and one that is the reason why I am obsessed with reading, and with reading [and watching] period dramas in particular.
No one could take me on a visual journey quite like Anne. No one.
To read one of her books meant to literally walk the streets of the New Orleans Garden District, or 1800s Paris, or ancient Rome, or the Holy Land during the time of Jesus—among other stunning and thoroughly researched settings.
I’ve never been one to get all crushed over a celebrity death, but this one hit me hard. After seeing Interview with the Vampire in theaters with my mom and grandma when it came out in ’94, I was obsessed. As soon as it came out on VHS, I had to have it and watched it over and over. A couple years later, at 12, I finally felt confident enough to pull my mom’s worn paperback book of the same name off the shelf and get the whole, real story and was hooked forever after.
As a hyperlexic child, reading came easy to me. Unfortunately, comprehension often did not. I’ve always had a tendency to zone out while reading, even while reading things I enjoy reading. Once I realize I’ve been doing it, it’s frustrating because I have to go back and try to figure out the last thing I actually remember reading.
This never happened to me while reading an Anne Rice book. [Ok, so maybe it did at a few points somewhere in the middle of The Witching Hour; there’s a lot of dry family history throughout the middle of that beast of a genealogical family drama!], but that’s it. Her writing was just so immersive as to immediately pull me in, like I was being physically transported through space and time.
This news was the first thing I saw after checking my email in the wee morning hours of my 37th birthday. I had barely taken my first sip of coffee and stared gape-mouthed at my phone unsure if I was seeing correctly. In 2003, when Blood Canticle had just been released, I’d planned to meet her at our local Barnes ‘N Noble for a book-signing tour. But I was 18 and a high school senior, and something came up. “It’s ok,” I thought, “I’ll catch the next one. She tours a lot!”
But I never did catch the next one.
That will forever be a regret of mine now.
Rest well, Anne. Thank you for my formative years; your words made them beautiful and immensely more tolerable.
The Humble Pedant 