Never Back Down From A Challenge...

With thanks to Lee for the prompt: Think of a character from any piece of literature that made you fall head over heels in love; as if you wanted to run away with said character and be his or her best friend forever. What was it that caused you to like this character so much? Strengths? Flaws?

Lestat de Lioncourt. The Vampire Lestat. As soon as I met him, between the battered pages of a second-hand copy of Interview with the Vampire, I was in love with him. He oozed charisma and charm; even when he was being pig-headed, stubborn and arrogant, he was captivating. His capricious nature and the sheer magnetism of his personality won me over even though I’m sure I was supposed to be rooting for Louis throughout the book. Oh, there were vampires before him, for sure, and there were vampires after him; there have been literary men and women who have touched me from the pages of books both before and since we met, but Lestat…well, there’s only one Lestat de Lioncourt. That’s probably a good thing, actually…

See, the thing with Lestat is he has a tendency to be…well, to be a bit of a bastard. But that’s part of his charm, honest; you find yourself simultaneously laughing at him and wanting to throttle him. But it’s his devil-may-care attitude and sheer bloody-minded arrogance that make him who he is; not for Lestat the life of hiding in the shadows, apologising for his existence and the truth of his nature, oh no. Monsieur de Lioncourt, seventh son of the Marquis d’Auvergne and the Brat Prince, apologises to no one for who and what he is. He may be the anti-hero of Interview, but don’t be fooled by his vanity or his attitude: underneath it all, Lestat has a heart of gold. He just doesn’t like to talk about it.

This is why I’m going to sing his praises instead. Underneath that prickly exterior and the selfish impulses, Lestat cares. When he realises that Louis is unhappy he turns the child, Claudia, into a vampire in order to bring love into the life of his companion. Some have seen this as a selfish act, a desperate attempt to keep Louis with him, and while I admit to a more than passing horror at the thought of an immortal child with a vampire’s appetite (and there is almost a none-more pitiful figure in the Vampire Chronicles than Claudia), there is some sort of method in Lestat’s madness. And he does love Louis, maybe because he reminds him of his first love, Nicholas, but it is love nonetheless. When his mother comes to him in Paris, dying of consumption and desperate to see her child one last time, Lestat turns her, too, keeping her with him and ultimately saving her from the lingering death that awaits her otherwise. He is generous to a fault; paying off the debts of the man who managed his acting career when he was still mortal, and buying the theatre he worked in to give to his friends. When the Revolution sweeps France and his petty-aristocratic family are all but wiped out, it is Lestat who takes pity on his old and sickly father and takes care of him, despite the distant relationship between the two. He is also fiercely brave, singlehandedly destroying a pack of wolves that had been terrorising his local village.

But as well as these heroic acts, Lestat has his faults. He is all but incapable of taking orders, advice or instruction and, thanks to him coming ‘out of the coffin’ with his autobiography and rock band, he is solely responsible for the events that take place in ‘The Queen of the Damned’; reviving the First Vampires and almost destroying both humanity and the vampires. Not for nothing was he named ‘The Brat Prince’ by an affectionate yet deeply exasperated Marius! Yet the events that he has unwittingly unleashed also give Lestat pause for thought, driving him to take a long, hard look at himself and what he has become. He may still be the irrepressible Brat Prince of old, but it is this moment that makes him realise that he is still deeply bewitched by humanity and spurs him to fight for some form of redemption. Lestat endures great trials in the next two books in the series, and yet he comes out of it a much wiser and, to my mind, nobler person. Of course, being Lestat, there are still moments when you could quite cheerily drive a stake through his heart without a second thought (not that that would kill him, but it would certainly go a long way to relieving your own tension); but the losses he experiences and the revelations he undergoes all serve to make him someone worth fighting for.

It was these hidden depths and his love for humanity, as well as his questioning mind and his spirit that made me fall for Lestat. Others may well be hypnotised by his beauty or drawn to his money and power, but for me it was his mind and his passions that excited me, and the overpowering desire to wrap him up and shield him from the evils of the ‘Savage Garden’. He’s not perfect, but then again he never professed to be and although I’m sure there would be times when I’d want to kill him, ultimately Lestat is one of life’s good guys. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend eternity with...

The first rule of Book Club...

I love books. No, I mean I actually love them. My books are my friends, and they have been ever since I was a child and my parents read stories to me; once I started reading by myself, I developed a voracious appetite for all things literary. I've read the great classics of literature, I've read light and fluffy chick-lit and (thanks to my somewhat disturbing fascination with criminal and abnormal psychology) I've read many gruesome serial killer books. My bookshelves groan under the weight of cookbooks, poetry books and magical encyclopedias; I worship Neil Gaiman, JRR Tolkien and Sylvia Plath (among many others) as my own personal pantheon of deities, and if you want a book about any subject at all, come and see me - I'll probably have something in stock. You name it, I'll read it.

I mean it; I'll try almost any book once. The only things I tend to steer away from these days are the 'real life' trauma books (you know, the ones with titles like 'The Girl Whose Father Whipped Her Daily With Linguine' - I don't mean to be flippant here but you know the ones I mean); Mills and Boon; Catherine Cookson and her ilk; and anything that has been written and published because it's 'like Twilight'. And I paid money for all 4 of those bloody Twilight books and read every single one, vainly hoping they'd get better. That's both money and nanoseconds of my life that I'll never get back again. Ah well...c'est la vie. And since I joined my book club at the end of last year, I've read things that I'd never have even considered before. Some of them have been fabulous and I have completely adored them, others I've hated, but new books means new worlds to discover and new friends to encounter.

I write this having come back from my monthly book club meet. We occasionally talk about the books, too...no, seriously, we do discuss them; it may not be very scientific or literary, but they are definitely talked about. This one was 'Papillon'; I'd seen bits of the film but had no idea it was a book. And not just a book, a true story! Just...wow. It was amazing; it took a while to get going, almost as if Papillon had to find his 'voice' as an author, but when he did it was just intoxicating. You can see it all so clearly - the camps, the prisoners, the escapes...it was amazing, and I would never have read it if it wasn't on our list. Next up is 'Lolita', which I picked - I've started it so many times but never finished it because I kept getting sidetracked, but Book Club disciplines me to actually finish them even if I hate them. Oh, with the exception of 'The Fraction of the Whole', which I hated beyond belief and so did everyone else - none of us finished that one! So now I will finally finish 'Lolita' and will have expanded my horizons yet further, and at least made some new acquaintances even if we don't become friends.

And that's the weird thing about books. They really do become your friends, and some of the friendships that I made in childhood endure to this day. I wasn't even five when I first met Fancy Nancy, Heidi, Ramona Quimby and Katy Carr (and became almost hysterical with delight when presented with a copy of 'What Katy Did' because I thought it was about me); over the years, I may have got older and more widely read, but there is still a very special place in my heart for these friends from my childhood. Others have come to join them over the years and our little circle of friendship has widened, but I've never lost the desire to get to know more of them and to keep reading. Goddess help me if they ever make it illegal...I'll end up forming a Resistance movement or something...