Violin was a disappointed. I hate to say it, but it was. ( )

Bitter, and sad, and achingly depressing. A slightly odd and difficult read. The author's own struggle with loss? Still, a nice story. Interesting that this is the only Rice I've read thus far with no trace of the erotic encounter. ( )

I picked a very bad time to resolve to finish any book I start. I made that resolution just before starting Violin by Anne Rice. This is really bad fiction all around. The prose is dull, the dialogue wooden, and the plot utterly predictable. The characters are mostly stereotypes, and the author relies on exasperatingly inappropriate repetition throughout (where was the editor on this one?). In other words, I didn't like the book at all. I give it two stars for effort, particularly since it includes a few poignant scenes concerning the heroine's loss of a child to cancer (which parallels Ms. Rice's experience in real life). The violin of the title is a Stradivarius owned by a student of Beethoven. How it arrives in the hands of a woman in New Orleans is the storyline of the novel. It can be summarized as follows: morose, self-pitying, self-loathing woman loses her husband to AIDS. Her wallowing in self-pity attracts the ghost of a student of Beethoven (the reason is never clear, although it appears that the attraction was the fact that the woman really, really likes listening to one movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). The ghost is really mean at first, but he's pretty stupid because the heroine has no trouble in getting his precious violin from him. The ghost is oddly materialistic for a ghost because the rest of the story involves him trying to get the violin back from the pitiful woman. In an effort to convince her to give it back, he transports her to Vienna to show her how he died (Rice apparently modeled the ghost's family on the Razumovsky family, which really was a big supporter of Beethoven before their palace burned down). Along the way they meet Paganini, for no apparent reason, and the heroine then wakes up in modern day Vienna possessed of amazing musical powers, considering she can't read music at all and has never really trained at all as a musician. People shower her with riches and everything goes really well, other than the fact that the ghost wants his violin back, dammit. I won't spoil the ending, but it's not very hard to guess anyway. Anyone who is at all intrigued by the Beethoven cameos in this novel should check out the Beethoven biography by Maynard Solomon. It's a psychological study of the man that shows just how screwed up some artists have to be to create great works. ( )

My favorite from Anne Rice, the writing style here just grabs you and pulls you into the story. ( )

The beginning to middle was sparse and unnecessarily so, making the whole book more of a chore to read than anything else. Nevertheless, trudging through it one is (slightly) rewarded with a cameo appearance from Stefan's teacher and one of the world's greatest composers. As a personal preference, the very last chapters were in my opinion the best (and not because the book would soon be over, either). Overall, unlikeable book, because Triana is a dull character who doesn't even whine complainingly. ( )