The Feast of All Saints [Paperback]

When I visited New Orleans for the first time a few years ago, I took a walking tour of the Garden District that included Ann Rice's house (complete with black limo outside). I also noticed small outbuildings that were referred to as 'garconierres.' When I questioned their purpose, I was told that boys were housed away from the main house in order to sow their wild oats in private. They were encouraged to eat, drink, be merry, take mistresses, and generally get the devilment out of their systems before adulthood and the need to marry, begin a family, and take over their fathers' businesses became expected of them.
The Creoles played a large part in this aspect of New Orleans society, and our tour guide said the best novel detailing all the permutations of Creole life was this one, Ann Rice's The Feast of all Saints. So I bought it.
Like all of Rice's books, it's overly long and wordy: I understand it's part of her contract with her publishing house that they will not edit out or change one single word of her manuscript as submitted. That's a shame, because I feel this would have been a better book if it had been a shorter book. I found myself skimming whole pages in places.
Nonetheless, it's a terrific 19th Century story of the gens de couleur libre, or the Free People of Color who were destined to be a distinct race caught between two worlds: slaves and owners. It was the Creole women who frequently became the mistresses of the white men. Descended from a mixture of races including African, French, and Spanish, they played (and continue to play) a unique role in the history of New Orleans.
At its heart, The Feast of All Saints is a coming-of-age story of Marcel, the child of a Creole woman and a wealthy, white plantation owner who has promised to send him to Paris to complete his education when he comes of age. It's also the story of Marcel's younger sister, who could pass for white; his mentor Christophe, another free person of color, and a few others of his friends. It's a story of struggle against alienation and of complex, intertwined relationships.
It deserves slow and careful reading, for it's rich with detail and passion - but man, it sure is loooong and repetitive in many places.

Once I started reading the Saints of All Feast I kept waiting for a Vampire to enter, but to my amazemet, this story unfolded a lot of unanswered questions about myself and my family. Coming from a great grandfather(who I now know to be a gens de coulerur libres)and my great grandmother who was considered a Negro,I understand their reasoning for migrating from Lousiana to Oklahoma, where I have generations and generations of Creole relations.I also now know why my mother was called the Black Sheep. This is a Beautiful Story. I recommend anyone that has any French Creole in their Blood read this book.

Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice has almost too much descriptive detail, and made the beginning slow reading, yet it was these details that made me feel I was actually there in the story. The character's physical descriptions were so vivid I could see them in my mind. Their thoughts and emotions were so well described I felt their dreams, their triumphs and their despair as my own. This book was written so that I lived through each of the characters.

This book is written about the "gens de colour" in New Orleans before the Civil War. Though descended from African slaves, they were also descended from the French and Spanish who enslaved them and then set them free. They could own property and pay taxes but couldn`t vote. The laws made them inferior to the whites but they could and did own slaves. They were considered socially inferior by their own relations yet in turn they felt superior to the slaves. It was a complex world and Anne Rice lets us see it through the eyes of the people living it.

Through her characters I also learned to look at things differently. Through Jean Jacques, who taught himself everything he knew, the term "self made man" has more meaning to me now. When Marcel explains the spiritual and material, how he felt all things are alive, I look at material things differently.

I enjoyed this book and while at times it seemed wordy and hard to read it was this wordiness that made it worthwhile. I could read it a second time and get even more out of it. This is what I consider a good book. Every time you read it you learn something new from it.