Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
by Anne Rice
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne RiceEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-10-07
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
Book Review: limited
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm just a casual fan and have read only one or two of Anne Rice's vampire novels. I came to this book mostly as a Catholic and as a fan of conversion stories.
Unfortunately, I ended up rather disappointed in this effort. The majority of the book is made of childhood reminiscences, mostly of the physical details of churches she attended. My guess is trying to recapture those childhood feelings probably led to her returning to the church, but the reminiscences really just weren't all that interesting. I'm sure they were to her, but unfortunately she really wasn't able to communicate that to the reader. You'd think such an acclaimed writer as Rice would have done a better job.
In fact, a lot of the writing seemed rather flat and low-key, even a little offhand. I'm not sure if this reflected her conversion, the very different subject matter, or perhaps a simple need to make some money. I'd even go so far as to say there was some real blunting of affect throughout the book, which I found rather strange.
Her life as an atheist and a writer of semi-occult subjects gets very short shrift. I would have really liked to have seen more on her thoughts about how these two lives of hers interact and intersect. It's quite a leap between the two. You'd think that would have been the main topic of the book, actually.
I also thought her many personal tragedies - including the deaths of her mother (to "the drink"), young daughter, and husband, as well her own brush with death through a diabetic coma - would have merited more attention. Those are the things that real conversions are made of, in my mind.
I am happy I read the book, though, and did get quite a lot out of it. (I also thinks she sounds like an interesting person whom I'd love to talk to and get to know.) It just seems the book could have been so much more.
Summary of Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
In 2005, Anne Rice startled her readers with her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and by revealing that, after years as an atheist, she had returned to her Catholic faith.Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana followed.
And now, in her powerful and haunting memoir, Rice tells the story of the spiritual transformation that produced a complete change in her literary goals.
She begins with her girlhood in New Orleans as the devout child in a deeply religious Irish Catholic family. She describes how, as she grew up, she lost her belief in God, but not her desire for a meaningful life.
She writes about her years in radical Berkeley, where her career as a novelist began with the publication of Interview with the Vampire, soon to be followed by more novels about otherworldly beings, about the realms of good and evil, love and alienation, pageantry and ritual, each reflecting aspects of her often agonizing moral quest.
She writes about loss and tragedy (her mother?s drinking; the death of her daughter and, later, her beloved husband, Stan Rice); about new joys; about the birth of her son, Christopher; about the family?s return in 1988 to the city of New Orleans, the city that inspired so much of her work. She tells how after an adult lifetime of questioning, she experienced the intense conversion and consecration to Christ that lie behind her most recent novels.
For her readers old and new, this book explores her continuing interior pilgrimage.
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