By
Graig Uhlin
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Debut novel of Anne Rice's son a confusing, plodding mess
The children of famous artists and entertainers often ply the same trade as their parents, and do so with some occasional success.
Jakob Dylan has the same gift for music as his dear old dad, Bob. Kate Hudson can throw around her winning smile and acting chops just as her mother, Goldie Hawn, did years ago. Michael Douglas, Ben Stiller and Angelina Jolie all came forth from the loins of very famous people to carve out their own creative niche.
More often, however, offspring of famous people go the way of Melissa Rivers - using their notable names to launch lackluster showbiz careers, much to the chagrin of the general public. Such is the story of Christopher Rice, son of vampire author Anne Rice, who recently penned his debut novel, "A Density of Souls" (Hyperion).
His book, just like those of his mother, is set in New Orleans - a setting that possesses an idiosyncratic and haunting aura which informs much of the tone of the book. Rice's New Orleans is a dark place where secrets and danger lurk, but at the same time it is endowed with a sense of intimacy and energy. There is so much beneath the surface of the Big Easy, just waiting to be unearthed from its swampy ground.
Unfortunately for readers, "A Density of Souls" rarely manages to dig any deeper below the surface of its convoluted mess of a plot. The main thrust of the story line - which is hard to determine as Rice too often flits between different subplots and narrators, creating a hugely decentralized and diffused novel - concerns a gay college student named Stephen Conlin and his former childhood friends as they grapple, five years after the fact, with two life-altering deaths.
No character, save the heroic Stephen, is free from vice - be it alcoholism, adultery or homophobia, which provides Rice with a number of subplots that he eagerly and often delves into.
The problem with this is that such meandering dilutes much of the novel's more potent moments such as Stephen's struggle with his budding sexuality and the obstacles he faces as a result of the that. What is left is a string of sensationlistic narrative surprises. Rice stays pretty much at the surface level of things and when he finds he can seemingly go no further into a subplot, he brings up another.
Such trickery, however, used to engage the reader only leaves one feeling just that - tricked, as in the eleventh-hour (or rather very last page) plot twist that not only undermines absolutely everything that preceded it but only makes the reader feel more cheated.
Aside from a meager plot that, granted, does have its tender moments, Rice's writing is not up to par for publication. The language is often amateurish and weak with characters tritely responding to cutting statements. Rice often writes that characters respond as if they were "punched."
One is almost inclined to think, after plodding through 274 pages of limp dialogue and strained descriptive prose, that Rice's few moments of success happened almost accidentally - as if products of literary probability, kind of like those proverbial monkeys-with-a-typewriter.
That might be a little harsh. Rice, only 22, makes a good effort with his debut novel. Often his passion for the subject matter - Stephen was loosely based on the author - and his emotional investment in this novel seem to shine through. Without, though, that last name on the book jacket, "A Density of Souls" would be the unfinished, unpublished sure-to-be-a-hit manuscript on another college student's laptop.
