Open House host Sheridan Voysey has written an opinion piece on novelist Anne Rice's decision to 'quit Christianity for Christ', published on the ABC's Religion and Ethics website today. You may remember Anne Rice was a guest on the show in late 2008, and is featured in our Open House Volume 2 book.
Rice has made waves in the media and blogosphere with her decision. In this article, Sheridan takes a slightly different tack to other commentators, suggesting that Anne's journey is symbolic of many who seek after God.
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As many a good fiction writer knows, there is often a deep, mysterious and symbolic link between an author's life and the books they create. Unconscious wells are tapped as words are chosen, sentences crafted and metaphors made. Only later does a writer realise how much she or he was the real character of the story.
Such may be the case for Anne Rice, the queen of dark novels like Interview with the Vampire and other gothic tales.
For Rice, the vampire was deployed as a metaphor for the outcast - the soul disconnected from others, from meaning and from hope. Her own story is in many ways analogous, its latest twist making her once more an outsider.
