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Violin | 
 enlarge | Author: Anne Rice
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $25.94 (100%)
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Rating:  258 reviews
Sales Rank: 272672
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Trade Ed
Pages: 289
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0679433023
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679433026
ASIN: 0679433023
Publication Date: October 11, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
If neatness counts for you, don't count on Anne Rice's musical-ghost novel Violin. It is an eruption of the author's personal demons, as messy as the monster bursting from that poor fellow's chest in the movie Alien. Like Rice, the heroine Triana lives in New Orleans, mourns a dead young daughter and a drunken mother, and is subject to uncanny visions. A violin-virtuoso ghost named Stefan time-trips and globetrots with Triana, taunting her for her inability to play his Stradivarius--which echoes composer Salieri's jealousy in Amadeus and possibly Rice's jealousy of her successful poet husband Stan Rice in the years before her own florid, lurid writing made her famous. The storytelling here is too abstract, but the almost certainly autobiographical emotions could not be more visceral. At one point, the narrator exclaims, "Shame, blame, maim, pain, vain!" But Rice's dip in the acid bath of memory was not in vain--she packs the pain of a lifetime into 289 pages.
Product Description
In the grand manner of Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice's new novel moves across time and the continents, from nineteenth-century Vienna to a St. Charles Greek Revival mansion in present-day New Orleans to the dazzling capitals of the modern-day world, telling a story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation.
At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana--who once dreamed of becoming a great musician--and the demonic fiddler Stefan, tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin first to enchant, then to dominate and draw her into a state of madness through the music she loves.
But Triana understands the power of the music perhaps even more than does Stefan--and she sets out to resist Stefan and to fight not only for her sanity but for her life. The struggle draws them both into a terrifying supernatural realm where they find themselves surrounded by memories, by horrors, and by overwhelming truths. Battling desperately, they are at last propelled towards the novel's astonishing and unforgettable climax.
Violin is crowded with the history, the drama, the invention, and the romantic intensity that have become synonymous with Anne Rice at her incomparable best.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 253 more reviews...
 I can't seem to forget it. September 4, 2008
Syzygy*** (Alaska)
I picked this novel up in a train station bookstore in Europe this summer and was captivated. It is as unusual as anything I've ever read and I'd actually have a hard time thinking of who to recommend it to, but to be honest I am totally unable to quit thinking about portions of it. Anne Rice has always had a style that I like, she is what I believe a true story teller should be..........smart, intuitive and blessed with a gift of description unlike few authors ever.
 Ugh May 23, 2008
K. Zupon
This book is so bad. I bought it in hopes that it would be like the other books that I've read by her, but I can't even get through the first 80 pages, and I've tried. I do not recommend this book to anyone.
 Slow In Its Development But Imaginative March 20, 2008
Ellie---Penny Dreadful---Reasoner (Galway & Home Again!)
It was nice that Anne Rice uncharacteristically wrapped up this story in a single volume. Also in light of what we've since come to know of her life at the time this was written, this was obviously a personal story for her to tell. The opening chapter in which the female protagonist lies in bed beside her dead husband's body, unwilling to give him up, is the sort of material that adheres to memory. Odd how this novel seems anachronistic today in light of Rice's current subject matter and what she has vowed she will spend the rest of her life writing. To be blunt I doubt she could have gotten this story published had she not been able to trade on her brand name status, but that's true of much of what exists on the market today. I did find this tale of loss, healing, and the haunting nature of love to be better than most of what is out there in this author's canon. Or at least among what she's written in the last twenty years.
Really, Really good July 19, 2007
Benjamin Sokal (San Francisco, CA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I must say I really enjoyed this book. The writing is gorgeous, the story is superb, and most importantly the characters are vibrant and real. No, this isn't part of the Vampire Chronicles so don't expect anything like the Queen of the Damned (for example). But it's not supposed to be. It is the story of Triana Becker's perserverance in the face of terrible grief and suffering, and the powerplay between Triana and the ghost Stephan. The end is not a physical battle like (for example) the battle versus the Queen of the Damned, but an emotional one in which Triana must fight her own demons. Will she succeed? You'll have to read the book (or listen to the audiobook, as I did).
Be patient, dear reader. Be patient. March 8, 2007
Jim Lonsdale (Phoenix, AZ United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
It is only through patience that once can truly appreciate this work. For only if you've the patience to trudge through the morbid obsessiveness of the first third of this book and to be drug down into the depressing depths of it can you appreciate this tale of Triana, a woman eaten away by her own guilt and obsession with death, and Stefan, the worldly ghost of a violin virtuoso straight out of the days of Beethoven. This is a tale of redemption and triumph that is not for the squeamish and not for those impatient for quick resolution, but is a wonderful read that rewards those who give it the chance to do so. Bravo, Anne Rice.
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