Her early books were great...original, luminous page-turners. Then Anne Rice became a "famous author." Apparently, she's now so famous that editors are afraid to alter her undisciplined, self-indulgent prose. What a shame. Encouraged to hope by the memory of Interview with the Vampire, Cry to Heaven and other early works, I keep buying and reading Rice's stuff...but this repetitive stew of self-pity (the main character is billed as a vastly intelligent woman, yet ruminates on and on and on over the same handful of incidents in her so tragic life like a lobotomized Guernsey) may be the final straw! What we have here is interior monologue substituting for plot. When this novel finally drags to an end, Rice swiftly and inexplicably ties up a few loose ends in a most unsatisfying way, but at least we're rid of the incessant weepers and whiners who populate this time-waster.