Episode 75 – The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice

Welcome to our All Souls Day Spoooooooktacular Tradition!  In accordance with the ancient scrolls, every Halloween we read another Anne Rice book and invite Dr. Claire Michker to drink too much and talk about it!  This year, we read The Tale of the Body Thief, and we have nobody to blame for it but ourselves.

If you’re watching the show but haven’t read the books, or if you’ve read the books and haven’t watched the show, or whatever your situation is, know that this episode has book spoilers up through, obviously, this one, and that Claire and Sara had watched the show up through episode 5 and may have dropped a spoiler or two.  If you have no idea how it works out with Claudia and do not want to know, you might want to hold off on this episode.

This book is a smorgasbord of trigger warnings including sexual assault, colonialist racism, attempted suicide, sort of a sideways kind of body horror? and a little light nun bangin’.  If that sounds titillating, don’t worry, it is also the most boring thing.  It’s just Lestat talking about God to people, forever.  That’s the curse of eternal life; you get to keep living but Lestat comes in your window and drones at you about religion at night.

This could have been a really fun, tight novella – Lestat is bored and godlike, and this guy Raglan James comes by and makes him an offer – James can body-swap, and he’d like Lestat to pay him 10 million bucks to be mortal again for the weekend.  Everybody is like “don’t do it, Lestat!” so of course Lestat is all “I’mma do it, y’all!” and then of course it does not go according to plan and then Lestat goes and begs for help and everybody says “We told you that was going to happen, Lestat!” and Lestat is all “Poor Lestat!”  Anne Rice then gets to expense a cruise. This should not take 500 pages, but don’t worry – Lestat fills all 500 with words.

If you’d like to check out our previous Vampire Chronicles episodes you can listen to them wherever you get your podcasts, natch, or here:

The Bodice Tipplers Meet the Vampire Lestat

The Bodice Tipplers Bow Before the Queen of the Damned

No, we didn’t do Interview – we really couldn’t face Whiny Enslaver Louis, but maybe we’ll go back someday.

One fun thing about Anne Rice books is that there are almost always delightful international covers to show you, but this book is so damn boring that most countries didn’t even bring their A game!  A few worth noting:

France: this… is this Lestat?  Nobody in this book has wings.  It does have a lot of words in it though so that’s a good representation.

This is also France, and this is legit good. Actually captures the intrinsic horror of the concept.  A+. no notes.

Russia.  Is this Lestat?  This Lestat is hilarious. Is this the Lestat from the Queen of the Damned movie?  If this is not Lestat, I have no idea what’s going on here.

Danish – I assume this is Raglan James, but I don’t think Lestat would have jumped at the chance to inhabit that German Expressionist forehead.

Hungarian – I guess the through-line for these covers is “what character is this supposed to be?”  And in Hungary, also “why is there a guitar?”  Both of these “trying to be menacing yet also hot” dudes need a shower.

Germany, are you okay?

French again – okay this is gorgeous and so good.  No idea which character, if any, it is supposed to be, but I’d have picked this up in a heartbeat.

Spanish – this doesn’t really feel like this book to me (half of this book takes place on the QE2, y’all) but it’s really striking and I dig it.

And THIS is your reward for scrolling all the way to the bottom.  Magnificent.