Feast of All Saints

I think the popular imagination tends to associate Anne Rice with vampires, witches, and generally supernatural subjects. I know that previously I myself had read only The Witching Hour and several books from the Inteview with a Vampire series. But The Feast of All Saints is one of an entirely different genre. Anne Rice writing historical fiction? No way! But here she is, doing it with the same exquisite skill that makes all of her other works so successful. But first, for your information, the synopsis from the back of the book: In the days before the Civil War, there lived a Louisiana people unique in Southern history. For though they were descended from African slaves, they were also descended from the French and Spanish who had enslaved them. They were the gens de couler libre--the Free People of Color--and in this dazzling historical novel, Anne Rice chronicles the lives of four of their number, men and women caught perilously between the worlds of master and slave, privilege and oppression, passion and pain. Which is actually a quite accurate description, except that there are certainly more than four people chronicled in this book. What I find most impressive about this novel, I think, is the lush realism Rice infuses into each of her characters. This isn't just a story about a few people's lives - it's an an incredibly vivid painting of an entire world that is as foreign and fascinating to our modern minds as any fantasy creation. Rice has an amazing ability for doing this--constructing entire universes complete with an endless number of lifelike characters. In The Feast of All Saints, she does this again, building the world of the gens de couler libre in the minds of her readers with exquisite detail and grace. The subject matter itself is a thorny one. This book is about the lives of several people of color living in a world where their race is an unshakeable part of every daily interaction - demeaning, galling, and always present. Initially, I was reluctant to read about this - racial issues are a depressing enough part of real life without having them rubbed in my face during my leisure reading! Yet Rice addresses these issues with the appropriate amount of care that they deserve--and no more. This novel isn't meant to be a treatise about the evils of slavery and the old lifestyle of legalized racial inequity. It's simply a story about people. Yes, race is perhaps the single greatest issue the characters face, but they're not just people of color. They're also simply human beings with the same dreams, hopes, and passions as any other, and over the course of the novel they become very human to the reader indeed. That said, the difficulties encountered by the gens de couler libre on account of their race are not ignored; in fact, they really make up the core storyline of the novel. But the people of color whom we follow are not idealized creatures of endless virtue and patience, nor are the white characters they interact with demon

This book, along with the Baroque Italian novel _Cry to Heaven_, are curiosities among Anne Rice's oeuvre-- straight-up historical novels without any supernatural elements. And despite the lack of vampires, despite the fact that the only "witch" in the book is a madam pretending to practice magic, I firmly believe that _Feast of All Saints_ is Rice's best work. I first read it six years ago, pulling an all-nighter because I couldn't bear to put it down, and I reread it every year or so._Feast of All Saints_ is set in antebellum New Orleans, among a subculture known as the Gens de Couleur Libre (Free People of Color). They were people of mixed race, descended from white planters and their black mistresses. While their lives are circumscribed by myriad rules, and they are forever considered second-class citizens, they have also grown complacent about the ways in which they are fortunate. Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned from this book was that the Free People, conveniently forgetting their own heritage, often kept slaves. Sometimes the slaves were even blood relatives of their owners. One of the best themes in the novel is the character Marcel's realization that he is luckier than he believes. It was an accident of birth that he was not born the legitimate heir to his rich white father. But it was also an accident that he was not born into the unsung ranks of the field hands. Rice paints a vivid portrait of this society, with its complex rules, strange bigotries, and dreams--a society where looking a little more black or a little more white than your peers might make all the difference in the world.But lest you believe this is just a Stuffy Novel about Deep Social Issues, it's also a darn good story. Rice illuminates the society through the eyes of four young people growing up and coming to terms with it. Marcel, intellectual and arrogant, dreams of the artsy life in Paris--but must learn to come to terms with himself in New Orleans. Richard's parents have built an elegant, polite bourgeois dynasty--but Richard will have to give up his true love if he wants to inherit it. Anna Bella, pitied for her African features, is sold into a liaison with a white man who loves her but can never acknowledge her publicly. And quietly intense Marie, considered beautiful because she looks white, is pushed toward a career at the quadroon balls, where she can make her family's fortune--but lose her self-respect. These four engrossing characters, plus many more, struggle to find self-respect and love in the face of all the rules. Reviewer "odilon" is right--the line "You are coming with me. Now." is the finest moment of this book, the words thundering through the characters' world. You'll be pumping your fist in the air and cheering, or crying, or maybe both. (I seem to remember I accidentally woke my roommate up the first time I read that scene.)Another reviewer complains of Anne Rice's misogyny. I'm tired of it too, but it isn't really

Here - coincidently on this night of All Souls - floating through my brain are thoughts on this Anne Rice novel, which indeed is one of her best. Before I mention all that this fine novel is, let me state precisely what it is not: It's not a book to be read quickly - for if you are used to reading through things briskly, with the urgent anticipation of the next read always at hand - then this one is sure to frustrate you; It's not an eventful or an adventurous storyline - though A.R. has written quite a few fast-moving tales, this one is slow and meticulous in both movement and detail; There is no absolute line drawn between the hero and adversary in this plot - every character is given a point of view in order to be understood, and elaborated upon until for certain it is understood.This is a novel unlike most novels. Set in New Orleans before the Civil War, FEAST OF ALL SAINTS is the story of a distinct yet veritably unknown society of people - numbering approximately 18,000 at that time - they were the free people of color. Free people of color were individuals of white and black mixed blood. They were a fragile society made up of those hovering between the established white population and the slaves. The unique and complex city of New Orleans gave this well-educated and interesting group of people a place in which to flourish. In fact, Voodoo queen Marie Laveau was a free person of color. Inarguably, her life has already been explored in works of both fact and fiction. Yet in this well-researched novel, Anne Rice brings to life fictional characters and gives such insight into the lives of these fascinating people as has likely never been seen.The protagonist, Marcel, is an adolescent whose parents are Phillipe, a wealthy & prominent plantation owner with a family outside New Orleans, and Cecil, his mistress, a free person of color. He is blond and blue-eyed, but with distinct African features - "combined in an unusual way that was extremely handsome and clearly undesirable." Marcel's younger sister Marie, however is dark-haired, beautiful, and could pass for a white person.Marcel is growing up assured of the knowledge that his father will send him to Paris to be educated as soon he is of age. Christophe, an author and free person of color who has been educated in France, becomes his mentor when he returns to New Orleans to open up a school. He also has two close friends - Richard, son of a wealthy undertaker, and Anna Bella. With every person in his life, there is a uniquely complex relationship.This, I must say, is very much a coming-of-age story. Yet - it rises above even that as it intertwines like a patient kind of poetry the feelings of isolation wrought from being misunderstood. It gives credence to the certainty that there can actually be drawn from within the soul of a person (and that all people possess certain qualities of the Saints) that which can overcome even the most intense adversity. This was only her secon

Roughly the first two hundred pages of this book deal with a young boy enrolling in a new school. In the process, the book tells us who this boy, Marcel Ste. Marie, is and brings passionately and atmospherically to life his people and their world. It's fascinating. It avoids cheap thrills to unfold like old fashioned literature into a great sensuous flower of a story that doesn't let go. Hints of Rice's customary obsessions are present in this early book but they are very restrained and so gain tantalizing power.The book deals with the free people of color in 19th century New Orleans, mixed-blood descendants of freed slaves- the proud old families who have established themselves as tradesmen and planters but also the children of white planters' quadroon mistresses. All are oppressed in subtle ways and walk a narrow path of propriety in response. Abandoning their heritage for more racially tolerant Europe is a constant temptation. Even the most refined, educated and prosperous members of the old families cannot vote. A respectable white planter must not be embarrassed by the second family he maintains with his mistress and all assume a mistress's pretty daughter will follow her mother's profession. Marcel, his sister Marie, his friends Richard and Anna Bella come of age in this environment with poignantly intense youthful enthusiasms, affections and anxieties. Anything their elders cannot face has been kept from them until they reach the age when their world's injustices become unavoidable. They then find themselves at odds with traditional ways that formerly provided meaning and certainty. The story that develops can't be summarized but it builds to such a pitch that when you reach the words in this review's title you might just cheer aloud, as i did. This is historical fiction at its best.

I have read nearly all of Anne Rice' works - the erotica, the vampire books, the Mayfair witch books, etc. - and this book is second only to Cry to Heaven. Just as in that vivid and lovely book, Rice has chosen a distinct period of history and an obscure group of people, and brought them to nearly palpable life. Years after reading this book, it's atmosphere and clearly drawn scenes linger in my memory. I had never known of the "gens de couleur libres" of New Orleans until this book. Rice has done an incredible job of bringing the time, place, and people to light. And the book brought such an engrossing human drama along with the knowledge, that it cannot be forgotten.Beautiful.