Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim)
Anne Rice, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400078950
Summary
Anne Rice returns to the mesmerizing storytelling that has captivated readers for more than three decades in a tale of unceasing suspense set in time past—a metaphysical thriller about angels and assassins.
The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O’Dare—a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases—just now: Lucky the Fox—and takes his orders from “The Right Man.”
Into O’Dare’s nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. O’Dare, who long ago dreamt of being a priest but instead came to embody danger and violence, seizes his chance.
Now he is carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England, to dark realms where accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews, where children suddenly die or disappear.... In this primitive setting, O’Dare begins his perilous quest for salvation, a journey of danger and flight, loyalty and betrayal, selflessness and love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; Anne Rampling;
A. N. Roquelaure
• Birth—October 4, 1931
• Where—New Orleans, Louisana, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., San Francisco State University
• Currently—lives in California
Anne Rice is an American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotica. She is perhaps best known for her popular and influential series of novels, The Vampire Chronicles, revolving around the central character of Lestat. Books from The Vampire Chronicles were the subject of two film adaptations, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles in 1994, and Queen of the Damned in 2002.
Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life there before moving to Texas, and later San Francisco. She was raised in an observant Roman Catholic family, but became an atheist as a young adult.
She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1974, while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, Rice published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. However, she distanced herself from organized Christianity shortly thereafter, citing disagreement with the church's stances on social issues, but pledged that faith in God remained "central to [her] life."
Rice's books have sold nearly 100 million copies, placing her among the most popular authors in recent American history. While reaction to her early works was initially mixed, she became more popular with critics and readers in the 1980s. Her writing style and the literary content of her works have been deeply analyzed by literary commentators. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years, from 1961 until his death from brain cancer in 2002 at age 60. She and Stan had two children, Michele, who died of leukemia at age five, and Christopher, who is also an author.
In addition to her vampire novels, Rice has authored books such as The Feast of All Saints (adapted for television in 2001), and Servant of the Bones, which formed the basis of a 2011 comic book miniseries. Several books from The Vampire Chronicles have been adapted as comics by various publishers. Rice has also authored erotic fiction under the pen names Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure, including Exit to Eden, which was later adapted into a 1994 film.
Early Life
Born on October 4, 1941 in New Orleans, Rice was the second of four daughters of Irish Catholic parents, Howard O'Brien and Katherine "Kay" Allen O'Brien. Her father, a Naval veteran of World War II and lifelong resident of New Orleans, worked as a Personnel Executive for the U.S. Postal Service and authored one novel, The Impulsive Imp, published posthumously. Rice's older sister, Alice Borchardt, later became a noted author of fantasy and horror fiction.
Rice spent most of her childhood and teenage years in New Orleans, a city that forms the backdrop against which many of her stories are set. Her early years were marked by coping with the family's poverty and her mother's alcoholism. She and her family lived in the rented home of her maternal grandmother, Alice Allen, known as "Mamma Allen," at 2301 St. Charles Avenue in the Irish Channel, which Rice says was widely considered a "Catholic Ghetto."
Allen, who began working as a domestic shortly after separating from her alcoholic husband, was an important early influence in Rice's life, keeping the family and household together as Rice's mother sank deeper into alcoholism. Allen died in 1949, but the O'Briens remained in her home until 1956, when they moved to 2524 St. Charles Avenue, a former rectory, convent and school owned by the parish, in order to be closer to both the church and support for Katherine's addiction. As a young child, Rice studied at St. Alphonsus School, a Catholic institution previously attended by her father.
About her unusual given name, Rice said:
Well, my birth name is Howard Allen because apparently my mother thought it was a good idea to name me Howard. My father's name was Howard, she wanted to name me after Howard, and she thought it was a very interesting thing to do. She was a bit of a Bohemian, a bit of mad woman, a bit of a genius, and a great deal of a great teacher. And she had the idea that naming a woman Howard was going to give that woman an unusual advantage in the world.
However, according to the authorized biography, Prism of the Night by Katherine Ramsland, Rice's father was the source of his daughter's birth name: "Thinking back to the days when his own name had been associated with girls, and perhaps in an effort to give it away, Howard named the little girl Howard Allen Frances O'Brien."
Rice became "Anne" on her first day of school, when a nun asked her what her name was. She told the nun "Anne," which she considered a pretty name. Her mother, who was with her, let it go without correcting her, knowing how self-conscious her daughter was of her real name. From that day on, everyone she knew addressed her as "Anne," and her name was legally changed in 1947.
Rice was confirmed in the Catholic Church when she was twelve years old and took the full name Howard Allen Frances Alphonsus Liguori O'Brien, adding the names of a saint and of an aunt, who was a nun. "I was honored to have my aunt's name," she said, "but it was my burden and joy as a child to have strange names."
When Rice was fifteen years old, her mother died as a result of alcoholism, and soon afterward she and her sisters were placed by their father in St. Joseph's Academy. Rice described St. Joseph's as "something out of Jane Eyre...a dilapidated, awful, medieval type of place. I really hated it and wanted to leave. I felt betrayed by my father."
In November 1957, Rice's father married Dorothy Van Bever...and, when she was sixteen, her father moved the family to north Texas, purchasing their first home in Richardson. Rice first met her future husband, Stan Rice, in a journalism class while they were both students at Richardson High School.
San Francisco and Berkeley
Graduating from Richardson High School in 1959, Rice completed her freshman year at Texas Woman's University in Denton and transferred to North Texas State College for her sophomore year, but dropped out when she ran out of money and was unable to find employment. She soon decided to move to San Francisco, and got permission from her friend, Dennis Percy, to stay with his family there until she found work as an insurance claims processor. She persuaded her former roommate from Texas Woman's University, Ginny Mathis, to join her, and they found an apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district. Mathis acquired a job at the same insurance company as Rice.
Soon after, they began taking night courses at University of San Francisco, an all-male Jesuit school that allowed women to take night courses. For Easter vacation Anne returned home to Texas, rekindling her relationship with Stan Rice. After her return to San Francisco, Stan Rice came for a week-long visit during summer break. He returned to Texas, Rice moved back in with the Percys, and Mathis left San Francisco in August to enroll in a nursing program in Oklahoma. Some time later, Anne received a special delivery letter from Stan Rice asking her to marry him. They married on October 14, 1961, in Denton, Texas, soon after she turned 20 years old, and when he was just weeks from his nineteenth birthday.
The Rices moved back to San Francisco in 1962, experiencing the birth of the Hippie movement firsthand as they lived in the soon-to-be fabled Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley, and later the Castro District. "I'm a totally conservative person," she later told The New York Times, "In the middle of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, I was typing away while everybody was dropping acid and smoking grass. I was known as my own square." Rice attended San Francisco State University and obtained a B.A. in Political Science in 1964. Their daughter Michele, later nicknamed "Mouse", was born to the couple on September 21, 1966, and Rice later interrupted her graduate studies at SFSU to become a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley. However, she soon became disenchanted with the emphasis on literary criticism and the language requirements.
Rice returned to San Francisco State in 1970 to finish her studies in Creative Writing, and in 1972 graduated with an M.A.. Stan Rice became an instructor at San Francisco State shortly after receiving his own M.A. in Creative Writing from the institution, and later chaired the Creative Writing department before retiring in 1988. In 1970, while Rice was still in the graduate program, her daughter was diagnosed with acute granulocytic leukemia. Rice later described having a prophetic dream, months before Michele became ill, that her daughter was dying from "something wrong with her blood." On August 5, 1972, Michele died of leukemia at Stanford Children's Hospital in Palo Alto.
Writing career
In 1973, while she was still grieving the loss of her daughter, Rice took a previously written short story and turned it into her first novel, the bestselling Interview with the Vampire. After completing the novel and following many rejections from publishers, Rice developed obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). She became obsessed with germs, thinking that she contaminated everything she touched, engaged in frequent and obsessive hand washing and obsessively checked locks on windows and doors. Of this period, Rice says, "What you see when you're in this state is every single flaw in our hygiene and Fyou can't control it and you go crazy."
In August 1974, after a year of therapy for her OCPD, Rice attended a writer's conference at Squaw Valley, conducted by writer Ray Nelson. While at the conference, Rice met her future literary agent, Phyllis Seidel. In October 1974, Seidel sold the publishing rights to Interview with the Vampire to Alfred A. Knopf for a $12,000 advance of the hardcover rights, at a time when most new authors were receiving $2,000 advances Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976. In 1977, the Rices traveled to both Europe and Egypt for the first time.
Rice's son Christopher was born in Berkeley, California in 1978, later going on to become a best selling author. In mid-1979, Rice, an admitted alcoholic, and her husband, Stan Rice, quit drinking so their son would not have the life that she had as a child.
Following the publication of Interview with the Vampire, while living in California, Rice wrote two historical novels, The Feast of All Saints and Cry to Heaven, along with three erotic novels, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, and Beauty's Release, under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, and two more under the pseudonym Anne Rampling, Exit to Eden and Belinda. Rice then returned to the vampire genre with The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, her bestselling sequels to Interview with the Vampire.
Back to New Orleans
In June 1988, following the success of The Vampire Lestat and with The Queen of the Damned about to be published, the Rices purchased a second home in New Orleans. Stan took a leave of absence from his teaching, and together they moved to New Orleans. Within months, they decided to make it their permanent home. Shortly after moving to New Orleans, Rice penned The Witching Hour as an expression of her joy at coming home. She also continued her popular Vampire Chronicles series, which later grew to encompass ten novels, and followed up on The Witching Hour with Lasher and Taltos, completing the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. She also published Violin, a tale of a ghostly haunting, in 1997.
Rice returned to the Catholic Church in 1998. which she'd left at 18 and after decades of self-avowed atheism. Her return did not come with a full embrace of the Church's stances on social issues; Rice remained a vocal supporter of equality for gay men and lesbians (including marriage rights), as well as abortion rights and birth control, writing extensively on such issues. In October 2005, while promoting her book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, she announced in Newsweek that she would now use her life and talent of writing to glorify her belief in God, but did not renounce her earlier works.
On December 14, 1998, she fell into a coma and nearly died. She was later diagnosed with Diabetes mellitus type 1, or "brittle" Diabetes, and is now insulin-dependent. In 2003, following the recommendation of her husband, and shortly after his death, Rice underwent gastric bypass surgery and shed 103 pounds. In 2004, Rice nearly died again from an intestinal blockage or bowel obstruction, a common complication of gastric bypass surgery.
Leaving New Orleans
In 2004, Rice announced on her website that she had made plans to leave New Orleans. She cited living alone since the death of her husband and her son's move to California as reasons. She left shortly before the events of Hurricane Katrina in August and settled first in La Jolla, California. Later, she purchased a six-bedroom home in Rancho Mirage, California
On July 18, 2010, Rice auctioned off her large collection of antique dolls at Thierault's in Chicago. Beginning in the summer of 2010 and continuing through the spring of 2011, Rice also began auctioning off her household possessions, collectibles featured in her many books, jewelry, and wardrobe on eBay. She also sold a large portion of her library collection to Powell's Books.
Renunciation of Christianity
On July 28, 2010, Rice publicly renounced her dedication to Christianity on her Facebook page:
Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply imposible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.
A media frenzy ensued with newspaper reporters, Internet bloggers, radio and TV commentators and news reporters around the world interviewing Rice and commenting on her announcement. In an August 7, 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Rice elaborated on her view regarding being a member of a Christian church:
I feel much more morally comfortable walking away from organized religion. I respect that there are all kinds of denominations and all kinds of churches, but it's the entire controversy, the entire conversation that I need to walk away from right now.
In response to the question, "[H]ow do you follow Christ without a church?" Rice replied:
I think the basic ritual is simply prayer. It's talking to God, putting things in the hands of God, trusting that you're living in God's world and praying for God's guidance. And being absolutely faithful to the core principles of Jesus' teachings. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A mystical thriller: forebodings of doom, promises of supernatural happenings to come. The first-person narrator is the melodramatically named Toby O'Dare, a preternaturally gifted hit man with a black hole where his soul should be.... [Yet]Toby is on his way to salvation.... It doesn't help Angel Time that Toby plunges into what seems to be a completely different novel when he's sent to 13th-century Norwich to help the city's Jewish community, victims of blood libel....It's impossible to doubt the sincerity of Rice's religious feelings...[but] Angel Time isn't a story so much as a message: Fear not, even the most depraved human being is loved by God and can find peace and purpose in accepting Him. Thus endeth the lesson.
Lloyd Rose - Washington Post Book World
Full of provocative moral reflections, this kickoff to bestseller Rice's new Songs of the Seraphim religious romance series centers on hired assassin Toby O'Dare, a one-time aspirant to the priesthood until personal tragedy unmoored his life. Guardian angel Malchiah visits Toby, who's just consummated his latest kill, and offers him redemption for his sins. After accepting the offer, Toby is whisked away to 13th-century England, where, in the guise of a Dominican friar, he becomes the protector of a Jewish couple accused wrongly by the gentile populace of having murdered their young daughter for her conversion to Christianity. Two eloquently told if clunkily joined digressions give the backstory on Toby and on the persecution of the Jews in medieval Europe. Readers will revel in Rice's colorful recreation of the historical past and in her moving depiction of characters struggling to reconcile matters of the heart with their personal sense of faith.
Publishers Weekly
In Rice's latest, an assassin meets an angel who puts him to work for God. Although "Lucky the Fox" has always justified his contract killing by letting himself believe he was really working for the proverbial "good guys," the seraph takes Lucky back to the 1200s and gives him the task of preventing a pogrom against Jews accused of ritually murdering Christian children. Readers of Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" and "Mayfair Witch" sagas develop a deep connection with protagonists Lestat and Rowan Mayfair, but it is hard to relate to Lucky. However, the novel is more fluid and action-oriented than Rice's recent trilogy about Jesus. At the heart of this odd mix of metaphysical thriller and historical novel is one man's rediscovery of his religious beliefs. Verdict: While smoothly written and full of Rice's noted descriptive detail, this title may disappoint fans of her wildly popular series about vampires and witches, while Christian readers who know Rice only as a paranormal writer will probably avoid it unless they have read her Jesus novels. Finding the proper audience may prove to be the hardest battle for this intriguing book. —Amanda Scott, Cambridge Springs P.L., PA
Library Journal
Time travel, ultraviolence and medieval madness—divine intervention rendered fantastically by Rice (Called Out of Darkness, 2008, etc.). A "man paralyzed by dissonance," Toby O'Dare is also a helluva hit man; he plays lute, reads Aquinas and shoves poisoned syringes in the necks of his tricks. A Beverly Hills penthouse serves as his crash pad, but he's otherwise nomadic, dodging Interpol for his faceless boss, the Right Man. RM insists that "the Good Guys" bankroll Toby's missions, but O'Dare thinks murder is murder and gluts on guilt. With two marvelous reimaginings of the Gospels and a spiritual autobiography recently extending her range, Rice revisits the shadows of her vampire classics; now, however, with her return to Catholicism, her sinners vie for redemption. O'Dare's desperate for it. His childhood dream of becoming a Dominican was dashed by trauma downright demonic; he rebelled against God when his drunken mother drowned his siblings and killed herself. His apostasy is of the tortuous, Graham Greene-ish variety; he can't stop praying to the God he left. Deliverance comes as a mysterious stranger. Right after dispatching a billionaire banker at a pricey hotel, Toby freaks at an interloper: Malchiah, it turns out, a seraph disguised as a swell. The angel's charge? Beam Toby back to 13th-century England, amok with anti-Semitic persecution. "Natural Time" becomes "Angel Time," and in this transcendental zone O'Dare is transformed into a Dominican friar bidden by Malchiah to save his soul through expiation. He must use all his cunning to rescue Meir and Fluria from a mob convinced that this harmless Jewish couple have poisoned their daughter for daring enter a cathedral on Christmasnight. Having become an Agent of Good, O'Dare, proving that God works in mysterious ways, descends into a world of faith perverted in order both to restore order and reclaim his own lost innocence. Emerging repentant "for every evil thing I'd ever done," he returns transfigured to the present time. Angelically inspiring. Devilishly clever.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Angel Time:
1. Describe Toby O'Dare. He is obviously flawed—is he evil? Talk about the way the events of his upbringing shaped him. Is there anything in his character you identify with? How does he change during the course of the novel? What does he learn?
2. Rice has said that presenting a character like Malchiah, who is "perfect and sinless," is a real challenge, especially trying to make him an appealing character. Do you think Rice pulled it off—is Malchiah appealing? If so, in what way? Does he have emotional depth...or is he more one-dimensional?
3. What is Malchiah's purpose? Does he function as a judge, a guide, a messenger, a recruiter...all or none of the above?
4. Why do people believe in angels? Do you? Does Anne Rice's conception of angels jibe with your own? Do you think differently about angels after reading this book?
5. Can you explain the concept of Angel Time?
6. What have you learned about the history of the Jews in medieval Europe? Do those background sections enhance the story...or do they drag down the narrative flow?
7. How difficult is it in your life to reconcile matters of the heart—your desires and all-too-human impulses—with your personal sense of faith?
8. Talk about Anne Rice, herself. She embraced Catholicism...only to renounce it years later. How do you view this book—where does it fit into her overall body of work? How does Angel Time jive with her vampire and witch books...or her soft-porn Sleeping Beauty series? How do you explain the variety of genres Rice writes in? (See our guide's author bio.)
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)