Reception and Analysis
Following its debut in 1976, Interview with the Vampire received many negative reviews from critics, causing Rice to retreat temporarily from the supernatural genre. When The Vampire Lestat debuted in 1985, reaction—both from critics and from readers—was more positive, and the first hardcover edition of the book sold 75,000 copies. Upon its publication in 1988, The Queen of the Damned was given an initial hardcover printing of 405,000 copies. The novel was a main selection of the Literary Guild of America for 1988, and reached the #1 spot on The New York Times Best Seller list, staying on the list for more than four months.
Rice's novels are popular among many members of the LGBT community, some of whom have perceived her vampire characters as allegorical symbols of isolation and social alienation. Similarly, a reviewer, writing for The Boston Globe observed that the vampires of her novels represent "the walking alienated, those of us who, by choice or not, dwell on the fringe." On the subject, Rice herself commented, "From the beginning, I've had gay fans, and gay readers who felt that my works involved a sustained gay allegory ... I didn't set out to do that, but that was what they perceived. So even when Christopher was a little baby, I had gay readers and gay friends and knew gay people, and lived in the Castro district of San Francisco, which was a gay neighborhood."
Rice's writings have also been identified as having had a major impact on later developments within the genre of vampire fiction. "Rice turns vampire conventions inside out," writes Susan Ferraro of The New York Times. "Because Rice identifies with the vampire instead of the victim (reversing the usual focus), the horror for the reader springs from the realization of the monster within the self. Moreover, Rice's vampires are loquacious philosophers who spend much of eternity debating the nature of good and evil."
In addition, Rice's writing style has been heavily analyzed. Ferraro, in a statement typical of many reviewers, describes her prose as "florid, both lurid and lyrical, and full of sensuous detail". However, others have criticized Rice's writing style as both verbose and overly philosophical. Author William Patrick Day comments that her writing is often "long, convoluted, and imprecise".
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