lucy wightman

Called Out of Darkness

a spiritual confession

by Anne Rice

I bought this book after learning that Anne Rice lost her daughter to leukemia before the age of 6.  If someone with such an imagination could weather this, perhaps her book could give me a roadmap. 

But, no. 

The book is a memoir of Rice’s ‘conversion’ to Catholicism written in a style I would not recognize as Anne Rice.  What an odd bird she is, this Anne Rice person, who dives into her sense of absentee gender multiple times, reporting on the profound events of her life in a PTSD state of numb, blank and intellectualized prose.  Better than Ambien for sleep.  If Rice was trying to express in an experiential way how unspeakable a loss she endured I missed it.

In the publication, First Things, Patricia Snow says, “Twenty-five years and twenty-one books after the death of her daughter, Rice entrusts both herself and the people she loves to God. Freed from a lonely circle of hell, she comes back to the Church…”  Snow defends the memoir in a realistic way, giving credit to the narrow focus on “the church” and at least pointing out what I noticed – the absent mention of her daughter.

Rice does not even state her daughter’s name.  Two years following her nameless daughter’s death, Rice published perhaps her most well known book, Interview With a Vampire, where a vampire named Lestat bites a six-year-old girl.

There is much guesswork in a memoir like this.  Designed to be compelling?  Maybe.  The balance between the unstated and the described falls short, very short, so short it is under the floorboards. 

With a disproportionate number of capitalized words, we are taken on a nauseating regurgitation of Catholic rites, rituals and structures, with mind-glazing explanations and dry departures from description.  Like a Vulcan, the text is void of any affect and her conclusions border on psychotic in the euphoric haze of finding “Him.”

I am imagining what her Rorschach protocol might have looked like during the construction of this book: landscape features, color shock, conventional form and vista scores.  Perhaps her pain is too much to report, or even mention, a feature worthy of respect.  But if one puts pen to paper, there is some responsibility to one’s readers.  Maybe when you are Anne Rice, page vomit with capitals is still profitable for publishers.