Anne Rice has written twenty-eight novels - magnificent tales of other worldly beings, novels set centuries ago and in contemporary times, that explore the realms of good and evil, love and alienation, pageantry and ritual: each a reflection of her own moral journey. Now, in her powerful, haunting memoir - her first work of non-fiction - she writes about her own life as a Catholic. She begins with her New Orleans childhood, in the 1940s and 1950s, where in a vivid world of the senses, of ritual and devotion, her faith was formed. In adolescence, in the shadow of her mother's drinking and slow death, and against a backdrop of Haight-Ashbury and radical Berkeley in the late 1960s, she slowly lost her belief in God but still felt that life had to be conscientious and meaningful.She married her highschool sweetheart and wrote "Interview with the Vampire", a lament for her lost faith. It was the tragic death of her young daughter which turned her into a writer; and the birth of her son, Christopher, that saved her from taking the same road as her mother. Rice describes a Damascene moment in Rio de Janeiro, and how, after thirty-eight years as an atheist, she turned back to Christ, not in blind faith but in a profound transcendental surrender made with open eyes to an all-knowing God, encompassing knowledge, beauty and science. Hers is a faith which has survived even in the face of her husband's subsequent death from cancer, and the divisive nature of contemporary religious debate. This is a spiritual confession that is a celebration; that moves towards a full commitment to Christ, rooted in the words of the Gospel of Matthew: 'Love your enemies'.
Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
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'fair-minded and thoughtful...Rice has not quite given up on shock' -- Times Literary Supplement
`Rice's book will satisfy readers' curiosity about her path to authorship and the impulse behind some of her best-known works' -- The Financial Times
`Rice's book will satisfy readers' curiosity about her path to authorship and the impulse behind some of her best-known works' -- The Financial Times
Book Description
Anne Rice's intimate memoir of her Catholic girlhood, her unmaking as a devout believer and the path back to her faith.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By M. A. Ramos
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
This is a spiritual memoir by the author of many novels on vampires, sexuality and pagan themes; Anne Rice. Rice begins by recounting her devout Catholic upbringing in New Orleans where as a child she had considered becoming a sister cloistered within a convent. The author is descriptive of her childhood life in New Orleans and the Catholic upbringing she had. She shares her fascination of various saints she was drawn too. She was a Catholic up until the time she went off to California to attend college.
The author then seems to lose detail and gives a brief glimpse of her loss of faith and turning to the atheism she proclaimed for decades. There is not explanation of what jolted her to not only question her faith, but to turn her back on Christ. Though she reference a key turning point was a comment from a single person which I found as a simple excuses to not explore the real reasons she ran into the darkness. But then again she was attending the great liberal colleges of today, the San Francisco State College and University of California Berkeley, where peer pressure most have been great especially during the 1960's..
As the memoir quickly moves beyond this part of her life, thirty-eight years, she starts what I believe is the reason she wrote this book. To share her path back to the light, faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. With the words of a well versed novelist she shares of her desire to travel and how where ever she went she always sought out Catholic churches to visit and how they moved her. The imagery that brought back the memories of her childhood faith that would drive her to seek what was missing in her life, the Word.... Read more ›
The author then seems to lose detail and gives a brief glimpse of her loss of faith and turning to the atheism she proclaimed for decades. There is not explanation of what jolted her to not only question her faith, but to turn her back on Christ. Though she reference a key turning point was a comment from a single person which I found as a simple excuses to not explore the real reasons she ran into the darkness. But then again she was attending the great liberal colleges of today, the San Francisco State College and University of California Berkeley, where peer pressure most have been great especially during the 1960's..
As the memoir quickly moves beyond this part of her life, thirty-eight years, she starts what I believe is the reason she wrote this book. To share her path back to the light, faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. With the words of a well versed novelist she shares of her desire to travel and how where ever she went she always sought out Catholic churches to visit and how they moved her. The imagery that brought back the memories of her childhood faith that would drive her to seek what was missing in her life, the Word.... Read more ›
By frankie
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
love this book a story which could well be so many other peoples. A must read if you are a fan of Anne Rice.
By Franz Kiffka
Format:Paperback
Yes, this is from the world world famous gothic romance horror novelist writer who produced the now very legendary in the horror world novel and the nfilm interview with the Vampire, as well as many sequels and other dark horror supernatural fiction books. In the horror fiction genre, she has a very well established respected reputation, and is known for doing what she does-romantic, supernatural vampire tales-very well and over many years now. In the last few years she put out a novel which totally suprised all of her loyal fans, as it was a novel depicting the early years of Jesus Christ from his point of view. This has since had a sequel also.
This shocked and confused many, though Rice has stepped back into her known romantic horror tales since but this book now just about gives a kind of explanation with detail of her renewed faith after years away.
Facinating, suprising and unexpected. Good read.
This shocked and confused many, though Rice has stepped back into her known romantic horror tales since but this book now just about gives a kind of explanation with detail of her renewed faith after years away.
Facinating, suprising and unexpected. Good read.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Absolutely critical insight into Rice's spiritual evolution through lifelong struggles with the big questions whilst dealing with deep personal tragedy. She has lived through intense personal pain yet has navigated her own pathway, much of it expressed through her fictional world. It is surely a natural progression for her to undertake a biographical series on Christ, and I eagerly await where her mind will take her next in the new found energy her imagination has.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Maybe Anne Rice is not a Christian Born Again or Reborn in Christ, maybe she is a Christmas Christian, but it does not change one thing about this book. It is a book of faith in which she explains her beliefs. It has no more value than that and that is a shame because Christianity deserves something more than just plain beliefs. To pretend that Buddhists believe in God is so far from reality that it does not deserve any consideration (p. 242). But to pretend that the gospels were each one written by one particular author in one particular style is absurd. Within the French Catholic Church, some noth secular and clerical researchers specializing in the study of the Scriptures have easily proved with undeniable linguistic knowledge that what we call parallel verses are in fact one verse from a Semitic language, probably the original language of the preaching, hence of the original gospel author, and the second from Greek, hence from a later author. In the Semitic original language Jesus was called rabbi or master meaning teacher, whereas in Greek he was called lord or master meaning the one who had authority over you. And that is just one remark, one point. The Gospels are based on an oral preaching from one man and then from a tradition of oral preaching beyond that one man, but still in a Semitic language, that of Palestine and Judea, probably Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and it is only later, when the preaching went beyond those Palestine and Judea, that a translation into Greek and Latin was not clear enough for the new generation of preachers and they added the Greek versions of the parallel verses. To ignore that is to ignore that the Gospels are historical texts produced by concrete people in concrete historical situations. But there is more about that.... Read more ›
12 of 26 people found the following review helpful
By Mandy Morton
Format:Hardcover
I find it sad how Anne Rice's work has gone from genius to mundane - well written still, but hugely dull, and I was saddened that she has rediscovered her invisible friend, and embraced a religion whose beliefs consign her own son to hell. I can only think that Stan's death affected her so profoundly that, like many bereaved, the only comfort they have is in some mythical reunion with the departed (though not - eventually - with the talented Christopher Rice I assume); but her own mythology was inifinitely more interesting.
I will love her for all her work to Blood and Gold; they more than compensate for her later output.
A real shame.
I will love her for all her work to Blood and Gold; they more than compensate for her later output.
A real shame.
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