Helpful Score: 4
beautiful novel about identity, January 5, 2006
Reviewer: JP Berniard "JP Berniard" (NYC) - See all my reviews
After reading the junk Anne Rice wrote in her latest novels, specially the vampire tales/chronicles, I am forced review one of her earliest and best works.
These were the days when Anne still had a flare for writing. No super vampires chatting with Jesus, no fantastic ridiculous tales in this book.
This book brings light to New Orleans History. It is a homage to a place in America that was and remains different from the rest of our nation. This novel contains a great deal of History as well as being a touching drama. The characters are split between races, cultures and social positions.In the end their struggle to find who they really were is successful.
This book is a cult classic, since it seems to me its author won't write anything like it in the near future...
Reviewer: JP Berniard "JP Berniard" (NYC) - See all my reviews
After reading the junk Anne Rice wrote in her latest novels, specially the vampire tales/chronicles, I am forced review one of her earliest and best works.
These were the days when Anne still had a flare for writing. No super vampires chatting with Jesus, no fantastic ridiculous tales in this book.
This book brings light to New Orleans History. It is a homage to a place in America that was and remains different from the rest of our nation. This novel contains a great deal of History as well as being a touching drama. The characters are split between races, cultures and social positions.In the end their struggle to find who they really were is successful.
This book is a cult classic, since it seems to me its author won't write anything like it in the near future...
Helpful Score: 3
One of Anne Rice's novels that don't deal with the supernatural - just the loves and losses of the "gens de couleur libre" in 19th century New Orleans. The characters are well written and some of them are very likeable. The city itself plays a huge role and is described as if it were alive - beautiful imagery. Again - some uncomfortable sex scenes - adult content.
Helpful Score: 2
It took me a couple chapters to really get into this book. Now after I have finished it I have to say that this is probably the best Anne Rice novel I have ever read.
Helpful Score: 2
This book is beautifully written. This is my favorite of all her works. I've read this story so many times I have it more or less memorised, so am finally passing it on. The feast of all saints leaves you believing in these characters; loving some, hating others- in the way that only an amazingly written book can do. It gives a unique and in depth look into the society, with all it's ups and downs of this often historically and literaturally ignored special class of individuals that arose from and where caught between in a society where the color of your skin, facial features and texture of your hair meant all the difference in your lot in life. This novel protrays a very real and often gritty view of these charecters world and lives. It touches on all aspects of their social scene with completely believable charecters, none of who are perfect. Absolutely wonderful book.
Helpful Score: 1
Slow start, but once I got into it I couldn't put it down. Learned alot of history that I didn't know about the free people of color in New Orleans, and their background in Haiti.
