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Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
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Average Rating:  out of 37 Reviews
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Price: $24.00
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Sale: $12.00
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Manufacturer: Knopf
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780307268273
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Anne Rice
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Publisher: Knopf
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Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
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Publication Date: 2008-10-07
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Reading Level: 256
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Description: 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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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Very powerful; among the most transparent and touching memoirs I've ever read |
Date: 2008-12-31 |
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Details: This may be destined to become a spiritual classic. I certainly hope so. Anne Rice's story of her Catholic upbringing, her falling away and 38-year sojourn into atheism, and her eventually return to Jesus Christ and his Church made a deep impression on me.
Not everything is seamlessly related, and that may be a good thing: it lends a bedrock authenticity to her account. And though there are passages of great beauty and power, there are also stretches of a more mundane nature. That's OK. Indeed, isn't that how life is? I found the first half of the book where she relates her Catholic childhood and youth occasionally tedious, but also strangely fascinating--and in the end absolutely necessary to give background and insight to her eventually return to the Church.
It is the second half of the book that redeems the whole. The picture that emerges is of a tremendously gifted woman who all her life--even during her nearly 40 years of wandering in the desert--is being drawn into the loving arms of Christ. The description of the process she went through to return to her first Love, to Him Who is Love itself, moved my wife and me to tears as I read the book aloud.
Her brief recounting of how she came to write her vampire novels, what they meant to her as she sought to relate the struggles of lost souls in a world without God--very much in line with her own life experiences at the time--how they touched a nerve with a huge audience of lost, alienated, and marginalized people, how the critics often misread her--all this is fascinating. The background to much of this is a lifelong struggle with and confusion about gender--her own, and its proper place in the world.
Finally, Anne Rice comes across as an extremely honest and even heroic woman. She is that rare person who is completely orthodox in her theology but so captivated by God's love for her (and indeed for the whole world and everyone in it), perhaps best expressed in Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, that she is committed to living her entire life in obedience to Our Lord's beautiful but challenging message from that passage. Consequently, her life now is one completely dedicated to loving her Lord with all her heart and her neighbor as herself. Amazingly, given her own struggles with Catholic teachings on sex and gender issues, she has found a way to do this in absolute obedience to the Church, even though she longs for changes. I find myself not in agreement with her here, but her firm fidelity to her Church despite her reservations about its teachings is an inspiration and a blessing.
Thank you, Anne Rice, for being willing to share with readers your remarkable story. |
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Review Summary: 4.5 stars - Fascinating on several levels |
Date: 2008-12-31 |
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Details: With the release of "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" the reading world discovered that Anne Rice, queen of Vampire and occult fiction, had undergone a profound religious conversion returning to her Catholic roots. So profound was her conversion that she has set the goal of only writing about Jesus, in one way or another, for the remainder of her life. This spiritual confession is about her journey away from Him and back to Him.
In the rich and sensuous prose her fans are familiar with Rice writes of her childhood in Catholic New Orleans, her early devotion to Christ and the Catholic Church, and the events that led her to abandon her faith early in college. She write about her years as an atheist and how her struggle with meaning in life came out in her fiction. Lastly, you will learn why, after forty years of staunch atheism, she was able to believe again.
Although a bit wordy (this is Anne Rice after all), this is a beautifully written, fascinating account of inner life and faith. You will not find torrid details or in depth accounts of many things that fans typically want to know about their favorite authors. What you will find is far more rewarding. Rice examines what her faith was founded on as a child, why it foundered, and how she made it back to God and Jesus. For those who do not believe this could be a great explanation of religious conversion. For those who do believe, Catholic or Protestant, you will see yourself in Mrs. Rice as she struggles with the most difficult questions while still loving her God and Savior. |
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Review Summary: Anne Rice's Life Comes Full Circle |
Date: 2008-12-26 |
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Details: This memoir is Rice's first work of nonfiction. This is book that finds a grown woman coming full circle in her religious beliefs. Rice gives an excellent description of growing up as a young Catholic girl. She recounts vivid memories of attending mass with her family. In "Called Out of Darkness" you will find a woman who at one time in her life renounced the church and claimed to be an athiest. The story of Rice's life and losses is very moving. It is refreshing to read about Rice returning to her hometown of New Orleans and reclaiming her faith in God.
"Called Out of Darkness" is nothing like any Anne Rice book you have read before. No more vampires and no need for garlic before you read.
Reviewed by Terri Boggs |
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Review Summary: A Half-Open Door |
Date: 2008-12-19 |
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Details: One can't expect working writers to be entirely candid; exposing too much of oneself can mar works of the imagination in progress. Also, candor is by nature difficult for writers of fiction as opposed to journalists and politicians; they write fiction in the first place because that is the way they are made. Given all that, this book is an illuminating addition to Anne Rice's work. The long opening introduction, deep in the physicality of the Catholic world and her childhood, is a distinquishing mark of the book and richly explains the genesis of Rice's monumental ability to create fully dimensional fictive worlds.
For those for whom the issue of Christianity or religion is more on the level of a debating society, the book will be --and remain -- a puzzle. It will also be a disappointment for those who want more of her real day to day life in this society, as a married woman and widow, as a mother. That is simply expecting too much. In any event, the admission that much of Lestat's interiority is based on her late husband tells us much, and we have no right to ask more. And besides, much of her social observation of the here and now has been sunk deep in the crevices of her fictions -- New Orleans, Paris, California, Georgetown, and many other places are all richly there -- not even to speak of the emotional density of her best fictional creations.
In sum, sure, the book is only a half open door. Its not a crass kiss and tell, and allows the writer to retain her integrity and privacy to do what she does best -- continue writing fiction. |
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Review Summary: Riveting |
Date: 2008-12-12 |
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Details: Once I started reading Called Out of Darkness, I couldn't stop. The author as a young girl lived the same kind of Catholic childhood that I did. Mrs. Rice and I loved the same Latin songs and Catholic rituals of our childhood. I found it ironic that Anne Rice thought she loved the Catholic Church because of its rich liturgical traditions. When she returned, many of those tradions were gone and she discovered that she had come back simply because she loved Jesus. |
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