Current Read: Cry to Heaven

Curious about the upcoming Tom Ford film adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel, Cry to Heaven, I decided last month to pick it up.

What a deliciously subversive and pleasant surprise.

I was enchanted by Interview with a Vampire in my youth and have always admired Anne Rice’s stunning horror stories for their attention to detail, atmospheric settings, lush prose, and, of course, the tantalizing homoerotic storylines between the incandescent characters she created. Somehow, Cry to Heaven had eluded my attention. A friend who is an avid reader recommended it several times, but only after the Tom Ford announcement did I order the book.

Everything about Cry to Heaven is alluring, engrossing, and riveting. Firstly, it’s not a horror novel, though horrific things do happen. It marked a brave departure for the author, a well-researched historical novel delving into the lives of the castrati in Naples in the eighteenth century. At the time of its 1982 release, the novel was likely well ahead of its time as it delved into themes of trauma, fluid sexuality, and gender, but I have to say it has aged very well and is now regarded as one of Rice’s major literary achievements.

All the cornerstones of Rice’s work are present: emotional depth and interiority, intense horrific trauma and human grief, cinematic settings brought to life with glorious atmospheric prose, and complex, deeply developed characters.

Cry to Heaven is impossible to put down. The kind of novel I’ve been desperate to read for a very long time.

Ford’s film adaptation is anticipated to be released in late 2026.

Happy reading.

–R.L. Jones