Rating: 
Summary: An old favorite of mine (and Rice's best, IMHO)
Review: This book, along with the Baroque Italian novel _Cry to Heaven_, are curiosities among Anne Rice's oeuvre-- straight-up historical novels without any supernatural elements. And despite the lack of vampires, despite the fact that the only "witch" in the book is a madam pretending to practice magic, I firmly believe that _Feast of All Saints_ is Rice's best work. I first read it six years ago, pulling an all-nighter because I couldn't bear to put it down, and I reread it every year or so._Feast of All Saints_ is set in antebellum New Orleans, among a subculture known as the Gens de Couleur Libre (Free People of Color). They were people of mixed race, descended from white planters and their black mistresses. While their lives are circumscribed by myriad rules, and they are forever considered second-class citizens, they have also grown complacent about the ways in which they are fortunate. Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned from this book was that the Free People, conveniently forgetting their own heritage, often kept slaves. Sometimes the slaves were even blood relatives of their owners. One of the best themes in the novel is the character Marcel's realization that he is luckier than he believes. It was an accident of birth that he was not born the legitimate heir to his rich white father. But it was also an accident that he was not born into the unsung ranks of the field hands. Rice paints a vivid portrait of this society, with its complex rules, strange bigotries, and dreams--a society where looking a little more black or a little more white than your peers might make all the difference in the world. But lest you believe this is just a Stuffy Novel about Deep Social Issues, it's also a darn good story. Rice illuminates the society through the eyes of four young people growing up and coming to terms with it. Marcel, intellectual and arrogant, dreams of the artsy life in Paris--but must learn to come to terms with himself in New Orleans. Richard's parents have built an elegant, polite bourgeois dynasty--but Richard will have to give up his true love if he wants to inherit it. Anna Bella, pitied for her African features, is sold into a liaison with a white man who loves her but can never acknowledge her publicly. And quietly intense Marie, considered beautiful because she looks white, is pushed toward a career at the quadroon balls, where she can make her family's fortune--but lose her self-respect. These four engrossing characters, plus many more, struggle to find self-respect and love in the face of all the rules. Reviewer "odilon" is right--the line "You are coming with me. Now." is the finest moment of this book, the words thundering through the characters' world. You'll be pumping your fist in the air and cheering, or crying, or maybe both. (I seem to remember I accidentally woke my roommate up the first time I read that scene.) Another reviewer complains of Anne Rice's misogyny. I'm tired of it too, but it isn't really evident in this book. The female characters, even the contemptible ones, are as well fleshed-out as the males. I don't really mind if some of the women are unsympathetic, as long as they're not cardboard. Some of the most fascinating characters in _Feast_ are women.
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