THE WOLF GIFT
Anne Rice
Chatto & Windus (RRP $32.95)
I WAS 14 when I read the first of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I remember devouring Interview with the Vampire, lapping up the lascivious delights of the decadently amoral Lestat, the vicious child vampire Claudia and the lonely, lost Louis. I thought it was genius stuff.
A couple of decades on, I picked up her latest, The Wolf Gift, intrigued to see whether she could replicate the success with the age-old werewolf myths, and a genuine horror unfolded.
Her prose is disastrous, tripping over itself in laborious repetition, the plot ponderously predictable. This is mortifying drivel that seems like it was written by a blood-fuelled wereman on heat, causing me to wonder if Interview was the fascinating read I once thought. Or was I simply 14?
