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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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Her "true story"

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The publication of Anne Rice's (b. 1941) memoir coincides with the tenth anniversary of her return to faith and the Catholic church on December 6, 1998. Rice's twenty-five novels of fantasy, vampires, witches and the occult, not to mention homoeroticism and sadomasochism, have sold upwards of 100 million books, so many of her fans were stunned to read a Newsweek article (October 31, 2005) in which she vowed that henceforth she would "write only for the Lord. Ready to do violence to my career. . . I consecrated myself and my work to Christ." She's made good on her promise, having published two books of a trilogy about Jesus -- Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005) and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (2008). Some diehard fans have wondered if Rice will ever return to the books that made her famous and famously wealthy. In May 2008, she posted an unequivocal five-minute response on YouTube [....] -- no, never again. The first half of Rice's "confession" describes her childhood in New Orleans, where she grew up in a third generation Irish Catholic family. Her father went to seminary but never became a priest; two aunts were nuns. Until age seventeen, she went to daily Mass and weekly confession. She never met anyone who was not Catholic, or any blacks. Rice has "the deepest respect" for the nuns and parish priests who shaped her world, a world that she describes as "interesting, vast and immensely satisfying." Her college years at Texas Women's University and San Francisco State also revealed her upbringing to be tragically insular, and so her faith "cracked apart" when it encountered "the modern world." She quit the Catholic Church and faith in God for thirty-eight years, until her return in 1998. Many parts of Rice's story are inherently interesting but left unexamined. She struggled learning to read. Her mother died of alcoholism at the age of forty-eight the summer after Rice finished the ninth grade, her daughter Michele died of leukemia at age six, and her husband of forty-one years, Stan Rice (an ardent atheist), died of a brain tumor in 2002. Rice was not radicalized living in San Francisco and Berkeley during the sixties and seventies; she describes herself as a "square" that was uninvolved and unaware of the political and cultural turmoil of those days. Gender confusion plagued her childhood, and her son Christopher (b. 1978) is gay. Rice made millions as a "nationally famous pornographer" (128), but says that she has "no guilt whatsoever for anything I ever wrote" (232). She fell "prey to long periods of depression and morbidity which seemed as much a part of my personality as type 1 diabetes was a part of my physical life" (199). Her publishing empire employees forty-nine people. This is a story with a happy ending for a woman who has lived "an unusual public and private life." Anne Rice has "found the Transcendent God both intellectually and emotionally. And complete belief in Him and devotion to Him, no matter how interwoven with occasional fear and constant personal failure and imperfection, has become the true story of my life" (4).

Interesting

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First, let me say how happy I am that Anne has found Christ again, or as I think she would say, that He has refound her. This was an interesting book on several counts. The first part, about her childhood, seemed overly detailed, and I found myself skipping forward. But two points were worth retaining. First, Anne was a poor reader, and her information came to her via visual stimuli or the spoken word. I found it amazingly ironic that so colorful a wordsmith would start out life that way. The importance of the visual in Anne's life probably accounts for the level of detail in her descriptions. Second, young Anne perceived her all-encompassing Catholicism to be at perfect peace with the world's scientific, intellectual, and cultural pursuits. I'm not sure I fully agree with that, considering the Legion of Decency, which she mentions, never mind the RCC's dealings with the Galileos of history. But I do see much of contemporary Catholicism, anyway, embracing man's search for knowledge. Once Anne began being drawn back to Christ the pages turned faster. I think my big takeaway here was that her conversion mirrored the dynamics of her childhood experience, in that it was initially driven by the visual rather than by the word. No one reasoned with her regarding the claims of Christ. No sermon convicted her. She didn't repent. Her wooing came via visual impressions of the religious statues to which she became addicted. Later it came via the spoken word of the masses she would watch on TV. The impression I have is a deeper-than-words yearning of the soul for its lover. Words come only afterward, to describe the relationship. And their ability to describe must be, as she admits, imperfect. The Body of Christ is diverse, as Scripture tells us. There are different gifts and callings, there are different perspectives on received truth. There are, Anne writes, Christmas Christians and Passion Christians. And each of us is at different stages of our growth in the reality of Christ. Yet the paradox is that Christians have the central unity of Christ in us, even as we work out our salvation. Anne's tells her story differently from the way I would tell mine, but there were enough touchpoints that it gave me some things to think about.

Ignorance is Bliss

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Called Out of Darkness by Anne Rice is not for the non-believer. The author admits repeatedly that she is a devout Catholic/Christian despite the status of the church. As an author of twenty-plus novels focusing on witches, vampires and evil forces, she attempts to twist her "past" into an excuse, a "path" if you will, back to religion. Considering the author's age and correlation of her sudden change of heart with her onset of nearly dying from a diabetes induced coma and the loss of her long time husband, one can only "expect" such a transition. The book is of interest if you want to know the present day Anne Rice. If you are a lover of religious non-fiction this is definately the book for you. The religious imagery is present, but only in the dry and droning descriptions of the various churches she has attended and visited throughout the world. The combination of a first person narration, multiple references to the many buildings she has purchased in New Orleans, her purchasing of things "regardless of price" and learning that she had/has a real issue with reading I have lost my interest in her work, present and past. If you are a devout "vampire" fan, free of religious barriers and ties, you probably won't want to read this one. I must admit that barring this dry read, I own every stick of literature Anne Rice has written, from the vamps to the witches and even her sultry sexual interludes (which are honestly, some of her best writing in my honest opinion.) I even own the two "Christ" books, however I had not read them yet, and will not do so now. Everything but the "Beauty" books is going to be donated to a library or charity. I wonder if the church down the street would like them? I have not read every thing she has written, but I have read most and do own all but this one. (Saved myself $24 - support your local library!) I have always been short on time and a slight sigh often escaped me when I would gaze upon my collection of Rice. If I'd had more time I would have certainly read those I have not read yet. That was until today, until I read "Called Out of Darkness." I have no interest now. I know I would be distracted, looking for undertones of christianity and her divergent path. But now which path was she really on? She claims that she was close to God and the church before she started reading, and that books basically led her to athiesm. Isn't it odd that books also (the ones she wrote) now also led her back to the church? This book is a dangerous double entendre! This books speaks of ignoring/not caring about the sins that the church has committed. She certainly can not cast the first stone, however I think her take on the church is irresponsible and blind. "In the face of all the reading material on these questions, I have to remind myself of my central vocation. It is not to learn church history or become involved with church politics. It is not to discover the reasons for the widespread pedophilia scandal, or even to discover why so many clergymen chose to break their vows, not with consenting adults, but with adolescents and children." (Rice, A (2008). Called Out of Darkness. New York: Knopf.) I don't know if she has many books left to write, but if she does, they'd really have to be quite a change from "Called Out of Darkness" for me to bother.

Not What I Expected

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The premise of the book was very interesting to me. How does an atheist convert to Christ? Sadly, we never really find out. Much of this book is devoted a painfully detailed description of Anne's early years and her experiences as a child in the Catholic church. Regarding the process of her conversion (or reconversion if you will), I'm not really sure how it happened - it just sort of happened according to Anne. In the end, she connects to Christ and her Catholic roots but without really accepting the church doctrine which she disagrees with in many important respects. Is she in? Or is she out? Has she returned to her Catholic faith only because it is a comfortable place to be once she reconnects with Christ? Would she be happier as a Baptist, a Methodist or as a member of some other Christian faith? Too many questions left unanswered for me to give this book more than two stars.

This books is a moving brilliant read!	Customer Rating:
I'm a huge fan of all of Anne Rice's books. When I heard that she was wrote a spiritual memoir I ordered it right away. I wasn't disappointed; and I ended up staying up half the night so I could finish the book, I couldn't put it down! Her descriptions of her early spiritual experiences at Church were beautiful and almost brought me to tears. Thank you for sharing your story!