Tag: Interview With The Vampire

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov

Posted September 8, 2016 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literary Fiction / 0 Comments

The Dead Lake by Hamid IsmailovTitle: The Dead Lake (Goodreads)
Author: Hamid Ismailov
Translator: Andrew Bromfield
Published: Peirene Press, 2014
Pages: 128
Genres: Literary Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

While I actively avoid a novel that is described as a modern fairy-tale, it is a good term to use while talking about The Dead Lake. The novella tells the story of Yerzhan growing up in the remote parts of Kazakhstan, in an area that the Soviets used for atomic weapons testing. As a young boy he tried to impress the neighbour’s daughter by diving into a forbidden lake. The lake was radioactive and diving into the water changed Yerzhan forever.

Diving into the dead lake means that Yerzhan will now never grow into a man, he is doomed to watch his love grow into a beautiful woman while he will forever be a prepubescent boy. The plot is very fairy-tale like and the reader has a front row seat into a struggle in masculinity. While never growing old may seem like a dream for some people, never reaching puberty would not be desirable. While re-reading Interview with the Vampire, I wanted this exact issue explored with Claudia. The idea that while Yerzhan may never physically age, time and experience means he grows and matures. His inner self is not reflected physically and he is doomed to be always treated like a child.

While the plot tells a fairy-tale like story, underneath all this there is something different happening. The Dead Lake is an exploration into the environmental impact of the cold war. Not just exploring the effects the Soviets had on Karakhstan but rather the impact both American and the USSR had on the world to demonstrate their power. I believe this novella was based on Lake Chagan, which the Soviets conducted nuclear tests on in 1965 and is still radioactive today. Around about 100 times more than the permitted level of radionuclides in drinking water.

This grim book deals with some hard hitting topics but credit to Hamid Ismailov for producing a beautiful novella. The writing in The Dead Lake is so lyrical and poetic it just flows off the page. I found myself captivated by the writing and completely sucked into the story. While it is no secret that I am a fan of Soviet and post-Soviet literature, there is something special about this novella. I love the idea of a bildungsroman where the protagonist is physically unable to truly come of age, I would like to read more novels like this.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Posted October 2, 2015 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Gothic / 2 Comments

Interview with the Vampire by Anne RiceTitle: Interview with the Vampire (Goodreads)
Author: Anne Rice
Series: The Vampire Chronicles #1
Published: Sphere, 1976
Pages: 308
Genres: Gothic
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

When people talk about Anne Rice, you can be sure that the first novel in the Vampire Chronicles, Interview with the Vampire, will be mentioned. Easily her most recognisable novel, this 1976 debut tells the story of three very different vampires. Focusing on the two hundred year old, Louis, the book tells how Lestat turned him as well as five-year-old Claudia, and his life as a vampire as he conveys it to a reporter. This breakout novel even spawned the hit 1994 adaptation starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst.

I first read Interview with the Vampire when I first got into reading and really enjoyed it. In that review I gave it high praises, saying, “The whole story is almost philosophical in the way it tells the struggle of Louis and his moral conscience…[A] battle of good and evil is played out in a more evil orientated world… It doesn’t feel forced or predictable it just leaves you thinking how wonderfully complex these characters are.” Looking back on that review with a fresh re-read and five more years of reading experience, I have a very different opinion.

First of all, the vampire mythology is an interesting literary device to explore morality. Looking back on the mythology, all the way to classics like Dracula; novels continue to explore the morality of a powerful vampire sucking the life away from the innocent. What gives them the right to life over everyone else? There is a conflict between morality and the idea of survival. Within Interview with the Vampire it does this in two distinct ways; first you have Lestat who takes life without a care in the world, following the instincts of survival. While Louis is often questioning his survival and the moral implications, often hating what he has become.

The novel spans the life of Louis for the past two hundred years, though Interview with the Vampire is just over 300 pages. For me this becomes the biggest downfall of the book, and the character development, especially the psychological, suffers. There are a lot of interesting topics that this novel could have explored but we never get the opportunity to do so in great detail. Take for example, Claudia; she has many years to live and learn about life, and this could have made for a far greater story. The struggles Claudia went through would have been fascinating, especially the sexual development of a girl stuck in a five-year-olds body.

It is interesting to see how much a few years has changed my view on literature; I feel like I am developing some useful skills to analyse the books. I also feel like I am getting to the point where I am starting to feel like I am ‘well read’ (although there is a long way to go). Having experienced more with the vampire mythology and literature in general, I am enjoying going back to some of the books I read more than five years ago. Sometimes I do not enjoy the novel as much, like I did this time, but other times I find a new found respect for what an author was trying to do (see a future review of The Handmaid’s Tale). Interview with the Vampire could have been so much more, and now I just wish it was.