So Anne, You've Got A New Book Coming Out — WHAA?

Goth writer Anne Rice used to pen the type of books you'd buy in an airport when you wanted just a little dose of titillation on your flight — you know what we mean; i.e. not a book you'd buy for this reason (today's no. 38 top link) — but as Newsweek reports in our top link, the people who'll be most titillated by her newest book aren't her old fans, America's vampire community. Rather, it'll be America's Jesus-related community. Rice has gone through a rough couple of years since her last book, 2003's "Blood Chronicle:" her husband died, she was gravely sick, and she moved away from her longtime home in New Orleans, but had friends and property there damaged by Hurricane Katrina. During that time she has rediscovered a religious faith she abandoned at age 18, reflected in her new book " Out of Egypt," about a 7 year-old Jesus Christ who only "intermittently" realizes he's the, ah, y'know, Messiah. As reflected by the story's prominence in BlogPulse today, many bloggers can't believe what they're reading. (These are the people who made Harry Potter our perpetually most-talked-about dude.) ParisRoses is matter-of-fact about it: "The world is officially coming to an end." A Metafilter wag is in the running for quip-of-the-week: "Anne Rice has gone from writing about the undead to writing about the undead." The Catholic Ragemonkey, meanwhile, says it's glad to have Rice back among the believers. Truly an unexpected development, and perhaps even moreso that this Jesus book is just the first in a three-part series. (Maybe in the next one, he turns out to be a vampire).

Posted by Philip Ewing at October 25, 2005 10:09 AM

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene