Let me start by saying that Anne Rice is my favorite author. I discovered her work when I was barely a teenager. Rice painted vivid, metaphysical worlds for her vampires, witches, and spirits. The page turning tales she spun were an escape that brought me through some of the toughest trials of my adolescence. There was one novel, though, that I completely disregarded because it was of the historical fiction genre. The Feast of All Saints is set in Louisiana in the 1840's. The main characters are the gens de couleur, or free people of color, in and around New Orleans. I was convinced the book would not interest me for the simple reason that the characters were all mortal.After all these years of neglect I've finally read it and, quite frankly, it has made me re-evaluate her entire body of work. I realize now that it was her characters always that kept me reading. I am a white American, born long after slavery and yet I was able to identify so deeply with the characters in this story that at times I wept. The Feast of All Saints is not about black people or white people or slavery or freedom. It is about the struggles of all people to figure out their identity, their place in the world. And as I look back I understand now that Anne was never really writing about vampires or witches, she was writing about us, about human beings.Unfortunately, this may be the last novel of hers I ever read. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed Anne's beloved New Orleans and much of Louisiana, she turned to Christianity in her grief. Since that time she has written an autobiographical account of her brainwashing, reinterpretations of the Jesus story, and some new rubbish about angels. Don't get me wrong, she has incorporated angels, God, and even the devil in her previous work, but this was always tongue in cheek. The trash she is putting out now is creationist propaganda as far as I can tell. Anne Rice has become the Mel Gibson of the literary world and it is an absolute tragedy. For me, it is as if one of the greatest creative minds of the medium is in a coma.I miss her deeply and can only hope that she returns to us.
This is the third time I've read this novel. The first, at a tender age of 15, left me wrecked, changed, broken hearted and overwhelmed. I then spent a summer a couple years later reading it aloud to my aunt, who made fun of my French pronunciation as well as added sound effects when necessary (a specialty of hers, learned from many years of listening to me read to her). The second reading cemented my youthful longing for an intelligent man and a journey to the city of light. Now, more than two decades later, I've returned to The Feast of All Saints out of curiosity. Only the occasional drift beyond the border and into the purple land of too-flowery prose kept me from assigning 5 stars to this novel. Despite many (many!) other "preternatural" novels by Rice that I have loved or have at least enjoyed, this historical novel about a boy coming of age in a cruel, difficult way is by far my favorite. The drama is intense, of course--how could it not be, with a 14 year old narrator with passionate ideas about art and music and Paris? Someone cries on nearly every page. I should, of course, be an adult and turn my nose up at this. But I refuse. This novel made me realize at a young age that your dreams are not awarded to you, but that you must work to make them come true. It taught me that love is illusory and must be experienced, cherished in every form that it appears. It taught me not to believe in anything and to never stop believing in everything. This is a big, contradictory, romantic, preposterous and wonderful novel that I still love.
What do You think about The Feast Of All Saints (1992)?
As I said about "Cry To Heaven" don't dismiss this as just another Anne Rice book. It's an historical novel about being a mixed race or mulatto young man in 19th century New Orleans. There was a whole class of colored, well-off, well-educated and cultured people in New Orleans at this time. They ranked far above the blue-collar Irish immigrants in the complex social strata of the Crescent City. While Anne Rice's writing tends towards the overlush, this is a captivating, interesting story of a time in history that many people outside of New Orleans don't know about.
—Roberta Stewart
Although mostly known for her vampire fiction, Rice's non-paranormal books are easily her best as Cry To Heaven and now this deftly illustrate.A beautiful mix of history and fiction that plunges us into the incredibly complex lives of the Free People of Colour of New Orleans in the mid 19th century, a world I was largely ignorant of prior to picking this up, I loved this book and soon found myself absorbed completely. Written mostly from the viewpoint of the St Marie family (Cecile, under placage with a wealthy white planter, and their two children Marcel and Marie) and the community whose lives touch theirs, the characters within were some of her most vivid to date. From the abhorrent Cecile to the dreamy Marcel, and from the lovely and decent Richard to the scandalous Dolly Rose, there wasn't a single character who I didn't feel intimately acquainted with and invested in their fates (particularly those of Richard and Marie...eep!) Once again New Orleans is easily just as big a character as any of the people within, and Rice writes about it so powerfully you can feel the love for her city flowing from the pages.Gorgeously written, intricately plotted, educational and emotionally powerful, I'd highly recommend this book.
—Lisa
I'm giving this five stars (it was amazing) because that is how I felt about this book when I read it when I was fifteen. My dad bought this book for me on one of our Sunday bookstore browsing days and I picked it up only because I liked the cover. I had never heard of Anne Rice and didn't know anything about her Vampire Chronicles. I was immediately sucked into this book by its historical context,intricate plot, kind of naughtiness, and very romantic New Orleans setting. I was devastated at the end because it really leaves you hanging. I've waited all these years for Anne to write a sequel and tell me what happened to Marcel. I doubt she ever will.I'm curious if the five stars would hold up if I were to re-read this today. I might have to try that soon.
—Kerry
