Rating: 
Summary: Original refreshing and Better than Lestat
Review: I have to admit that although I enjoyed Anne Rice's best selling Vampire series, this book is much better!!!
Rating:
Summary: haunting
Review: I read this book in 1986 & I have never forgotten it. I wanted to share it with my 27 year old daughter but couldn't find it in any book store. Over the years I have periodically asked for it - to no avail. Now, playing on the internet - I find it!! I will go & buy the reprint & reread it for a great holiday weekend read. Thanks for making it available again.
Rating:
Summary: THE vampire novel.
Review: I treasure my copy of The Vampire Tapestry. People that I have lent it to always say, "You were right - it's amazing. It's so real. It could be a real person. The part where..." Alongside Mendal W. Johnson's Let's Go Play At The Adams', H.F.Saint's Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, and Erskine Childers' classic Riddle Of The Sands, The Vampire Tapestry stands as a totally believable narrative. Respectively you are thinking, "This really happened - these kids kidnapped and tortured the babysitter," and, "This guy really is invisible, and yes, it really would be that hard to survive," and, "Germany could have invaded England that way," and so too Dr Edward Wayland absolutely IS a living 20th century vampire, confronted with the very real problems of surviving in very changed times. Whenever I lend The Vampire Tapestry, or any of the other titles mentioned, I always lend a spare copy, with the stipulation that if the reader enjoys it they can keep it, provided they then track down a spare copy themselves, so they can then lend it under the same proviso. It's a good system that keeps some precious books in circulation - a little like the forest community in Farenheit 451 keeping their books alive. I can not recommend The Vampire Tapestry enough. (And it would have made a much better film than that other piece of rubbish!) Read it and become a convert.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good!
Review: If you are looking for romance or compassion, this book is not for you. This is a compelling story of the vampire known as Dr. Weyland. Forget what you have learned. Vampires do not have fangs. There is some sort of puncturing device in the tongue. It secretes an anticlotting substance. The vampire then seals his lips around a minimal wound and draws the blood freely. This book tells of five different parts of Dr. Weyland's existence. All are in present day. The first has Dr. Weyland on a campus. The second has him caged like an animal. The third is an encounter with a therapist.The forth takes place during an opera. The last puts him into hybernation. In some stories the vampire wins. In some the prey escapes. This make it impossible to guess the ending. ***Now THIS, I believe, is what being a vampire would REALLY be like. No glamour. Pure survival.***
Rating: 
Summary: A truly orginal vampire
Review: Ms. Charnas creates here a really unique monster. Her predator is so believable, it seems possible. This is not a brooding creature (like the Anne Rice variety), but a cunning animal, who even knows he cannot allow himself to empathize with his human victims and behave emotionally. I wouldn't suggest this to the Goth crowd. If you are ready to meet a different kind of vampire, step in...
Rating: 
Summary: HALLOWEEN IS COMING -- GET YOUR VAMPIRE HERE!
Review: My tale of a thousands-year-old vampire, Edward Lewis
Weyland, turns out to be not only a year-round solid mover
but a seasonal item, which people pick up to give to friends
or to read or reread for themselves on a dark and windy
night in Autumn . . . Dr. Weyland is a professor of Anthropology at a small eastern college who specializes in
dream-research (all those sweetly sleeping, healthy young
students . . .) He's also a vampire of ancient origins, not
a ghost of a dead man but a product of evolution -- the ultimate predator, whose natural prey is man. For his own
amusement he studies us and teaches us, and he's got a very
nice life arranged for himself -- nice car, comfy job, lots
of respect. Until he makes a terrible mistake in his
choice of victims and winds up bleeding all over the
steering wheel of his Mercedes, off the road in a public
park, where some small-time hoods find him. They pick him
up and discover what he is, and they decide to sell him to
-- well, his adventures have begun, and they lead him at
length to a crossroad at which a dark decision must be made.
I began this book as a single story about a vampire
hunting a woman who turns out to be a better hunter than
he is. When I was done and had sold the story to OMNI
MAGAZINE, people said, "But you didn't let us see him
drink!" So a new chapter opened up which gives you, gentle
reader, the position of voyeur; and then a further
development blossomed in my busy writer's brain, for surely you (and, to tell the truth, I as author) want also to see
the vampire in love, or what passes for love with him. And
after that -- At the end, I looked back and saw that I
had a novel, a story of survival and adaptation, and a
meditation on the theme of predation. It's not the bloody
old Count all over again, and it's not a lurid Rice rip-off,
it's the most distinctive and provocative vampire tale
you've ever come across. Enjoy. But don't bother with
garlic and crosses. They don't even slow Weyland down.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: Probably the best of the "revisionist" vampire novels. The writing is excellent throughout: at times, especially at the end, it becomes quite haunting. Simply a virtuoso performance.
Rating: 
Summary: Unusual, but readable.
Review: The premise of _The Vampire Tapestry_ is interesting enough, and makes the book worth reading - a presentation of the vampire not as a supernatural creature but instead some high-order product of evolution. I also appreciated the doing-away-with on Charnas' part of some the genre's more tired cliches such as nocturnalism and the self-pitying introspection that plagues certain other popular vampire characters. The book apparently grew out of a short story once published in _Omni_ magazine. Unfortunately, the work doesn't seem to shake of that feeling. The five chapters are rather disjointed in segue from one to the next. It feels less like a cohesive novel and more like an anthology centered around a single character. Our vampire protagonist, Dr. Weyland, starts off as an intriguing enigma, but towards the climax of the book, it seems Weyland is more bored than anything. However, this malaise may have been intentional, and it does serve to explain his actions at the end of the story. In the course of plot development, Weyland's confidence and amorality are slowly replaced with suggestions of human-like frailty and compassion. These characteristics are brought about by a series of encounters between Weyland and a psychiatrist. Having read this 1979 work for the first time in 1999, I found the author's underlying implication that psychotherapy can take care of any emotional problem to be a bit dated. One final note; As a citizen of Albuquerque, I was initially drawn to this book because the back cover indicated that it was a vampire story set in New Mexico. In actuality, three of the five chapters take place in New York. If you're looking at purchasing this book for the southwestern setting, consider yourself warned.
Rating:
Summary: It Takes Time...
Review: The story in a nutshell:
Dr. Weyland, a vampire, makes a very stupid mistake that threatens to expose what he is to the masses. With his existence threatened, Dr. Weyland tries to regain control and slip back into a stable and unsuspecting life.
There is no doubt that The Vampire Tapestry is a realistic and conceptually powerful story about a vampire. However, it is mostly boring to read. TVT (The Vampire Tapestry) is broken down in five stages of life for Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland. It is not an epic tale spanning thousands or hundreds of years; it's a compact story in terms of time lapse, only covering a few years of his life. So do not expect the kind of time lapse that you get with Interview with a Vampire (IWAV), for example. TVT actually succeeds in making a heartbreaking revelation about what it would *really* be like to be a vampire. Unlike IWAV, which tells its story by attracting you with blatant emotion and drama, TVT tells its story with a lack thereof. TVT is a very emotionally distance story, which makes it very difficult to read and, as previously mentioned, boring. The writing style is very academic and that adds to the emotional distance, so do not expect ornate and dramatic writing here.
While I was reading TVT, I was very upset at how slow and boring the book was and I was convinced that I would hate it no matter how it ended. But when I finished it, I set it aside and really thought about the story in its entirety. I have decided that the end justifies the means. It's a very heartrending story and, even though I disliked Weyland throughout the book, I couldn't help but to feel tremendously despondent for him.
So is this book for you? If you want to read an action packed vampire novel, skip this one. Also skip it if you are looking for a romanticized or dramatic vampire novel. TVT is rooted in this world and there are no genre gimmicks, no supernatural displays, no excessive violence, and no gore. It takes time to appreciate TVT, but it is ultimately a realistic "Vampire Tapestry" and I have a feeling that this one will stick with me over time.
Rating:
Summary: A vampire walks among us
Review: The Vampire Tapestry is the story of dream researcher and vampire Dr. Edward Weyland. This is a very unique vampire story. Unlike the horror stories we are use to, here we have a complicated creature without fangs or any of the other things we expect; but he still needs blood. The main character, the vampire, gets kidnapped and after escaping begins talking with a psychologist. He is not the stereotyped vampire at all and the author does not make him sad, pitiful, or sexual in any way. A very good read and something different. This type of vampire could actually exist...
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