Between 1810 and the Civil War, there lived in New Orleans a strange, belonged-nowhere class of people called the free people of color, known better as Creoles. Varying mixtures of the black race and French ethnics (halfbreeds, quadroons, and octoroons, mostly), they had a unique place--or non-place--in Louisiana society. They could own property (including slaves), but they couldn’t vote; they had their own civilization, but they were unwelcome outside it.
The best artisans and craftsmen in the pre-War South were these Creoles. Daguerrotypists, woodworkers, writers, and musicians of all sorts came from this strange sub-section of New Orleans society.
Socially, there were distinct classes in New Orleans--probably more so than in any other place in the South. While at first glance it might seem as though the mixing of the races should have created a blurring of the social lines, quite the opposite happened. Rich French whites, white tradesmen, poor whites, educated Creoles (the whiter the higher in rank), poor Creoles, and slaves was the way the chain went, and seldom did the groups mesh--except in one area: Rich French slave-owners often had a Creole mistress and children. Often these children were well-cared-for and highly educated.
The Civil War, with the upheaval of an entire way of life, ended the solidarity of Creole society. Very little has been written about these odd people, which is one reason Anne Rice’s Feast of All Saints is such a jewel. With its attention to period detail and setting, Rice makes us see a dead civilization at the peak of its lifespan.
Feast of All Saints winds its way through the lives of one representative family, as seen through the eyes of the only son, Marcel. He sees his beautiful mother, the nervous mistress of a drunken French plantation owner, as a woman who is tied to her destiny; she’ll never be anything but what she is. His sister, the lovely Marie, can pass, and her ability to do this brings on her shame--and eventually her happy marriage and honeymoon to France.
Marcel himself is an oddball. He has no desire to learn a trade, but his out-of-control father hasn’t got the money for the boy to live in style. He wants to write, to read, to travel to Paris--and his father’s promises of ’’someday’’ aren’t ringing true anymore. He’s bored with his life.
Into that dullness combined with anxiety comes Christophe, a handsome young Creole writer who’s spent the last few years in Paris with his lover, a strange Englishman named Michael. Christophe begins teaching Marcel, both in class and out, about the wonders of literature and politics, languages and geography--and the boy is utterly enchanted. When Michael shows up and dies of the fever, any chance of true happiness is gone for both Marcel and Christophe.
Meanwhile, Marcel is sleeping with Christophe’s aging insane mother, as well as with a pretty neighbor girl. His best friend Richard is falling in love with Marie, and marie is getting raped for being alone on the street, as no proper white girl would be. (She’s not white, of course, but she looks it...)
As the story ends, Richard, who never wanted to leave Louisiana, is on the ship to Paris with his new bride, Marcel, who wanted so badly to travel watches them leave, and Christophe is more or less out of everyone’s life.
With a story as wide-ranging as this, Rice could have concentrated on a couple of characters and let the rest fade into the settings. To her credit, however, she didn’t do that; even the least important characters have scenes where they shine. Dolly Rose, who could have been a cookie-cutter loony, is instead an anguished mother, a tired whore, and a beautiful survivor. Marcel’s father isn’t just an uncaring and abusive drunk; he’s a henpecked husband, a bankrupt planter, and a confused father. Each character is a real person, and each real person has a reason for being in the story; there are no extraneous characters here.
Feast of All Saints is a jungle. It winds its sinuous way through a hundred situations, leaving its dark mood in your mind. There’s nobody happy in this book until the very end, and Rice’s writing is so full of emotion for her characters, you can’t help but feel for them.
A perfect combination of narrative and dialogue keeps this long book going. Never tipped too far one way or the other, they combine to breathe life into the characters. As usual in Rice’s best books, there’s the claustrophobic feeling of being buried beneath layer upon layer of tangled gossamer threads.
Finally, mention should be made of the lead character: New Orleans. The city--its streets and ghettos, its plants and houses, its look and smells--is the real star of the show here. No other author has managed to make a place so integral a part of a story without actually writing about the place itself. New Orleans is special, and Feast of All Saints couldn’t have been written with anywhere else as its setting.
Final decision: Feast of All Saints is spectacular. While some might claim The Witching Hour is Anne Rice’s best work (with some justification), Feast of All Saints is simply one of the best books written in the last century. Own it.