Review: Called Out of Darkness

Called Out of Darkness by Ann Rice

Wow! (I've said that a lot this Lenten season) What a happy little accident that I stumbled upon this book.

48 hours ago I didn't know very much about Ann Rice. I first learned about her approximately a year ago through her book Pandora which I began to read but never finished. My sister Mara who was never much of a reader found the Vampire/Supernatural and suddenly increased her reading to surpass even my college reading as an English major. I was  surprised to find however that she hadn't read anything by Anne Rice. A few months ago I found about six Anne Rice books and sent them to Mara.

By chance I decided to like Anne Rice's page on facebook, why I have no idea but I did and noticed she is very vocal on her page. I decided with Lent coming to an end I would find another copy of Pandora and give it a second try. While looking through books on my library app I noticed that Anne Rice had a memoir and that it was available as an audiobook. I decided to read the description and realized this was exactly the type of book I needed to conclude my Lenten journey.

Rice begins with an in depth and detailed description of the Catholic church of her childhood. Her poetic and vivid imagery sets a tone of pure adoration for the majority of the book. These images were a spectacular reminder of what I too have fallen in love with about the catholic church.

Throughout the book she details her family life and her struggles and her ultimate turn to atheism. I will admit that I was one of those she discussed who picked up her books about Christ and was skeptical. This is the woman who writes about Vampires! But after reading her memoir I will be looking at her novels very differently. I think this would be beneficial to all who read her novels to start here, or end here either way. It is always great to see what was going through an authors life and mind and see how they integrated it into their works. This author however is more in depth and fascinatingly real than any author I have ever heard of.

Her love and study of history, her struggles with conventions of gender, her struggles with reading and her passion for writing the outcast make her novels even more exciting to me.

The quote that struck me was actually one that is quite simple. It expresses why she ultimately came back to God:

"God was there. God was Everywhere. God was God."

It all leads back to love. She wrote about the changes that occurred in her life once she came back to Christ saying that now her life long job was to learn to love everyone. She claims it to be the hardest thing about following Christ.

I am so glad I chose to read this book and now that Lent is nearly over, I have a huge stack of Anne Rice novels on my to read list.