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A review by tristansreadingmania
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
3.0
“I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place."
- Hannibal Lecter
There always lies a certain degree of tragedy in reading the source material after having seen (multiple times) its expertly executed film adaptation. Besides the revelation of the plot, the resulting contamination makes it mighty difficult to come up with one's own, unique interpretations of the characters. It slightly spoils the reading experience, since the element of surprise, the freshness is all but gone.
This is especially true for Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, with its now iconic portrayals of Clarice Starling and Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter. As a thriller, it is by definition very much plot driven.
For this reason, reading the book became more of a clinical procedure to me, trying to detect where there is a deviation in dialogue, which scenes were cut/expanded, which characters were more or less fleshed out, etc.. The viscerality which a novel of this type often aims to provoke, wasn't quite there as a result. I see why it's a very well-written thriller, but the emotional response just never quite managed to materialize.
There was however a theme I spotted in this, which I strangely didn't pick up on before. After thinking it through, I found it's really a tale about parentship. More specifically, about which of the primary (almost archetypal) males in Starling's life at that time can claim her (an orphan) as his, which one has influenced, moulded her the most.
First there is Crawford, the respectable, protective mentor figure, who tries to guide her through the pitfalls of her fledgling career in the FBI. Then we have Chilton. A rather sleazy, intellectually inferior asylum ward, who makes thinly veiled sexual advances towards Starling, and doesn't quite respect her in an official capacity. And finally, the fiendish Lecter, who seeks to corrupt (metaphorically devirginize?) her, to impart to her an esoteric knowledge about the inescapable darkness of the world and the human psyche. The dialogues between him and Starling are for that reason alone utterly fantastic.
If this was my first encounter with Harris' world and characters, it most definitely would have been awarded a four or even five star rating. It truly is a great piece of crime thriller writing, and deserves all its praise. Unfortunately, it suffers from my early, intense exposure to the film adaptation, bringing the rating down a notch.
- Hannibal Lecter
There always lies a certain degree of tragedy in reading the source material after having seen (multiple times) its expertly executed film adaptation. Besides the revelation of the plot, the resulting contamination makes it mighty difficult to come up with one's own, unique interpretations of the characters. It slightly spoils the reading experience, since the element of surprise, the freshness is all but gone.
This is especially true for Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, with its now iconic portrayals of Clarice Starling and Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter. As a thriller, it is by definition very much plot driven.
For this reason, reading the book became more of a clinical procedure to me, trying to detect where there is a deviation in dialogue, which scenes were cut/expanded, which characters were more or less fleshed out, etc.. The viscerality which a novel of this type often aims to provoke, wasn't quite there as a result. I see why it's a very well-written thriller, but the emotional response just never quite managed to materialize.
There was however a theme I spotted in this, which I strangely didn't pick up on before. After thinking it through, I found it's really a tale about parentship. More specifically, about which of the primary (almost archetypal) males in Starling's life at that time can claim her (an orphan) as his, which one has influenced, moulded her the most.
First there is Crawford, the respectable, protective mentor figure, who tries to guide her through the pitfalls of her fledgling career in the FBI. Then we have Chilton. A rather sleazy, intellectually inferior asylum ward, who makes thinly veiled sexual advances towards Starling, and doesn't quite respect her in an official capacity. And finally, the fiendish Lecter, who seeks to corrupt (metaphorically devirginize?) her, to impart to her an esoteric knowledge about the inescapable darkness of the world and the human psyche. The dialogues between him and Starling are for that reason alone utterly fantastic.
If this was my first encounter with Harris' world and characters, it most definitely would have been awarded a four or even five star rating. It truly is a great piece of crime thriller writing, and deserves all its praise. Unfortunately, it suffers from my early, intense exposure to the film adaptation, bringing the rating down a notch.