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A review by lanternheart
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book would have justified the idea that the tongue of the simple is the vehicle of wisdom. This has to be prevented, which I have done. You say I am the Devil but it is not true: I have been the hand of God.
To say that The Name of the Rose is a dense book is to speak only one of its many truths: however, its challenges provide a rich reward for the mind willing to venture their labyrinths. While at once a mystery, a historical portrait, and a fallen manuscript, it is also a book of the lengths gone to in the name of faith, the name of professed truth, and contains many meditations on the nature of a Christian God that were fascinating even to the lay-reader such as myself.
As seen through the eyes of the young monk Adso of smell, we learn at his side of all of these things — and the nature of truth in faith, and faith in truth — aided by the keen eye of the Holmes to his Watson, the sharp and questioning Brother William of Baskerville. The dynamic between the two characters is never in Adso's doubt as that of master and student, but William teaches Adso far more than how to solve the mysterious deaths at the Abbey: he helps Adso unravel the contradictions of his faith, and leads him to the interpretation of signs rather than to the interpretation of God purely.
The questioning of truth, and whose interpretation of it matters and is guarded by whom, lies at the heart of this book, and makes it well worth the read, contemporary today as when it was published. That the book around which each murder is placed is