Is there a supernatural creature Anne Rice hasn’t written about? Though she’s best known as the queen of the vampire genre, Anne Rice has written novels about witches, mummies, angels, and now werewolves. The Wolf Gift is the first book in one of Rice’s relatively newer series, having come out back in 2012. Somehow, I’d never heard of this series until I stumbled upon it in the library, but I decided to give her werewolves a shot.
Reuben Golding is an up-and-coming journalist who’s been assigned to do a story on a grand mansion in California that’s being put up for sale. When he visits with the mansion’s owner, Marchent Nideck, and tours the house, Reuben falls in love with the place, wishing he could buy it for himself. But the house has some dark secrets: Marchent’s uncle, the original owner, went missing many years ago, leaving behind strange manuscripts and ancient artifacts from his research. After Reuben survives a brutal attack, he discovers that he’s inherited not just the house, but a mysterious Gift, as well. By night, Reuben transforms into a wolf-like creature and feels compelled to hunt down evil-doers. Could this gift be related to the disappearance of Marchent’s uncle? Will he find answers about what he has become at the Nideck estate?
While quite different from her early works like the Vampire Chronicles, The Wolf Gift actually reminded me a lot of the other recent Anne Rice book I reviewed, The Passion of Cleopatra. While one deals with werewolves and the other with mummies, both were tales of new and old immortal creatures coming together to answer questions about their nature and figure out their moral place in the world. The Wolf Gift depicts a rather unique take on werewolves in that Reuben becomes something of a vigilante—his heightened senses narrow in on cries for help and the scent of evil, so that he can show up in the midst of a crime and direct his beast-like savagery at the perpetrators. When back in human form, Reuben struggles with the moral dilemma of his vigilante life. In Clark Kent fashion, he writes articles about his other identity for the newspaper, many of them discouraging the populous from holding up the “Wolf Man” as a hero. Yet, the fact that his new powers seem built for dispensing justice makes him feel that perhaps he is part of some larger purpose, and beyond the reach of human laws and ethics.
The Wolf Gift is perhaps the most Gothic of Anne Rice’s novels that I have come across so far. By that, I mean that it utilizes many of the characteristics of the traditional Gothic novel. The biggest of these is the setting: The story takes place in an ancestral family home that Reuben christens Nideck Point. Like all proper Gothic residences, it has portraits of past inhabitants, clues to long-buried mysteries, and a complex set of secret passageways and hidden rooms. It also has a mysterious family legacy: the house has belonged to the Nideck family for many generations, but no one knows where the family originally came from, who they really are, or where they got their wealth. And most importantly, the house is the site of people and events from the past coming back to haunt the present—in this case, a man long-assumed dead returns and reveals himself to be an immortal werewolf. I loved seeing Anne Rice pay homage to her literary roots in this way!
If you’re interested in reading The Wolf Gift, you can find it in your local bookstore or buy it online and support The Gothic Library by clicking this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments!