The Name of the Rose

Rating:
Summary: for the questioning mind
Review: this book was my answer to NaNoWriMo (a national endeavor in which people write a novel in the month of november). i vowed to finish the book in a month or bust. As it turned out, I read it in a little over a week, and spent that time running around praising it to the heavens.

I readily acknowledge that it might not appeal to the common tastes. It's very dense, there's a lot of history and latin passages that aren't glossed or explained. It presupposes an interest in late medieval history, without which you'll get bored before the mystery really kicks in.

That aside, Name of the Rose really packs a punch. Eco's monastery is flawlessly recreated (read the postscript for more insight into this aspect of the novel), the tone is dead-on, and the mystery is chilling and well-wrought.

The library brooding at the center of the story is both a wonderful focus and an apt allegorical anchor for the philosophies that are woven through the story. Borges' short stories come to mind - the authors share the same gift for creating settings that seem to have their own evil intentions.

You can't expect an easy read from this book. You CAN expect an intelligent, well-written, deeply interesting journey into the medieval mind. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: I read The Name of the Rose over twelve years ago and it remains my favorite novel. It is a fascinating reading experience which immerses the reader in its world.

Prior to reading the novel, I could never understand the appeal of monastic life. The Name of the Rose not only showed the appeal, but showed the cleverness of medieval monks in creating their cloistered world.

And, as is the sign of a truly good book, when finishing the last lines, I did feel a bit of remorse for the experience having just ended.

Rating:
Summary: magnificent
Review: IFollowing one review published here,I would like to note I do understand that some poeple do not have time and energy to read some books, but that doesnot allowed them to speak about the book just because they`ve heard it is valuable to read.

I have read "The name of the rose" and find it very intriguing and written with tremendeous skill. Umberto Eco is one of the best novelist in the world. Not to many novelist are condsider good these days (if we speak about level of Tolstoy or Dostoyevski). What I find most fascinated regarding Eco`s novels, particulary this one is that "smell" of middle century. Literally you can feel the atmosfere of the monastery and the dialogues are beyond the ordinary...

At the end, no one can read Dostoyevski but everyone can read Helen Fielding. I dont want to insult but that does not means she will be remmembered.

Rating:
Summary: Reading this book is hard work
Review: I was a bit surprised to see how highly most reviewers rated this book. A quick review this morning revealed the following:

4 people rated "The Name of the Rose" with 1 star
4 people rated it 2 stars
3 people rated it 3 stars
24 people rated it 4 stars, and
a whopping 134 people rated it 5 stars.

I'm not sure what all of that means, except that I disagree with at least 138 of the reviewers of this book.

This is not an excellent book, nor is it a horrible book. It is a book that requires a tremendous amount of work and patience from the reader. I've found that I just don't have the patience or energy for it right now, so I'm going to put it aside until some other time when I might.

A reviewer below suggests that this book may not be for readers who regularly enjoy Grisham or Patterson. Well, this reader enjoys Borges, Woolf, Steinbeck, Wharton, Kundera, and Alice Walker, and it was not, as far as I could tell, for me either. The religious history was not presented in a way that engaged my interest. I find the 'investigator' William, interesting and sympathetic, and yet I don't quite trust him and I find his motives suspect. In addition, the "talking heads" way in which much of the history is presented (ie - William speaking nonstop for several pages to Adso about an event or the characters of several different religious groups) just felt awkward and unrealistic.

Eco's attention to detail can be truly mind-numbing, especially for this reader, who tends to read in bed at the end of the day. It took me four weeks to get through the first hundred pages because I couldn't give my attention to more than about 4 pages a night. I was just too tired. This is not a book to read when you are tired.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has:
1) an interest in Catholic or religious history
2) plenty of mental energy to devote to it
and 3) a reasonable amount of time to read each day

If the above doesn't describe you, tread carefully down this particular path.

Rating:
Summary: More than just a murder mystery
Review: "The Name of the Rose" is quite the interesting book, and somewhat demanding of the reader. As Eco claims in the postscript, it is written in such a way as to require the reader to approach the story on the book's terms, at the pace of the time it depicts. It is also written as a sort of game played with the reader. The effect is enthralling and challenging.

Since the story is essentially a murder mystery, you wind up approaching the story with a detective's eye, attempting to solve the crimes alongside one of the principal characters, a Sherlock Holmes-like inquisitor named William. What really sets this particular story apart, however, is how Eco has anchored the story, the setting, the story's manner of telling, even its language in some ways, firmly in the Medieval era. Eco himself claims to be a staunch Medievalist, even viewing the present world through a medieval eye, and that bias shines through in the story.

The reader is left with both a compelling story and a multi-layered riddle consisting of church history, architectural puzzles, and riddles of language to solve. And I was just expecting a good murder mystery set in the middle ages.

Rating:
Summary: Close off a system and all hell breaks loose
Review: For a real kick, read The Name of the Rose and Il Nome della Rosa side by side. (Seriously.)

Umberto Eco excels at the grand, old-fashioned parlor murder mystery--while depicting the corruption of a closed (very closed) society. As usual he names and enumerates our baser side as humans and winnows out those rare moments of transcendental grace--entertaining all the while.

Eco is a master at picking apart what appears to be a smoothly functioning machina~only to reveal the putrid, gooey center that cloistering preserves.

This was for me a swift, gratifying read--and it is one of my top ten books to read repeatedly. While it is his scope that I enjoy--I most appreciate his artful eye. Reading The Name of the Rose is quite literally a cinematic experience...don't bother seeing the movie (Sorry Sean.)

Not that it matters: but, I developed an interest in St Francis after reading this.

Rating:
Summary: A Serious Novel for Serious People?
Review: First, a warning: Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" is, at times, as daunting as the intellect of the man who wrote it. Eco, armed with his almost unique flare for combining philosophy and history, sets out to recount the mysterious, and sinisters, events occuring over a week long period in an Italian monastery in 1327. The premise and events are deliciously obscure, the solution far superior to your average who-dunnit climax.

Second, a fanfare of trumpets: the film was a great big, historically accurate flop. But that was because it was trying to be a big, historically accurate book and that was never going to work. Yes, the prose is dense, and yes, there are several paragraphs written wholly in latin without translation, but the novel overall is so rewarding that ploughing through it proves worth it. The characterisation of William of Baskerville, with his enormously proud intellect and his dry, satirical sense of humour, is quite classic. Adso the self-starring narrator-come-sleuthing novice is innocently fervent, while still retaining his seedier lusty boy-self. The remaining cast? A virtuoso performance of character studies and cameos (take special notice of the Bishop of Kaffa, the man who is still alive despite all piously hopeful statements to the contrary). And far from being a book for serious people, there are some crack-you-up, laugh-out-loud moments from the stand-up act that is Wlliam of Baskerville.

Third, beautiful and terrible as an army arrayed for battle: Eco is exploring some very deeply interesting philosophical statements concerning human nature in "The Name of the Rose" and he leaves you to puzzle out their origins. Find the mirror in yourself and hold it up - what does it show you about human nature, whether its mediaeval or modern-day?

In a nutshell: settle down in the cold of winter, focus and dive in...and don't expect satisfaction until you've worked your way through the labyrinth and found the real book, the real "The Name of the Rose", the key to the whole mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Two, two, two books in one, not counting the Postscript
Review: TNOTR is two books uncomfortably mated in one manuscript. One is a conventional, not very unusual historical mystery novel, a pastiche of the Sherlock Holmes stories with Occam thrown in. The other is a tedious textbook on heresy. If you must read this book consider skipping every other chapter.

Rating:
Summary: The name of the Labyrinth
Review: Eco's The Name of the Rose is largely inspired by Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinth, where the world is an infinite library and people are merely librarians moving around this infinitude. Eco is fascinated by Borges, there is no doubt about that, as it's obvious in the novel beginning from the choice of the name, the fact that Jorge Luis Borges and Jorge of Borgus (in the novel) was blind as well. Borges was an erudite writer, he was even called the writer's writer. This is Eco's first novel, and I presume that he wrote in an act of inspiration and a tribute to Borges, plotting down some criticism blueprints.
Borges Labyrinth deals with the meaning of the "word" in the labyrinth of texts, intertaxtuality, deconstruction, and it discusses the matter from a theological point of view as well, since THE SCRIPTURE "should" be the benchmark of interpretation, but even that is no more, as the story fortells.

The novel is still filled with valuable information, historical, theological, scientific...etc. The pace of the novel however, is slow, if one is to compare it to Foucault's Pendulum which was much cleverer than The Name of the Rose, and richer in so many ways. I personally found The Name of the Rose a bit slow.

One more thing, do read Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinth before The Name of the Rose!

Rating:
Summary: The bestseller that has never been read
Review: The Name of the Rose is quite complex in its initial appearance which according to the author is a work of non-fiction derived from an old manuscript written by a monk called Abo of Melk that Umberto Eco has translated for all the world to see and read. It is a 13th century tale of this monk's youth spent as an apprentice to an ex-inquisitor, Brother William of Baskerville who has been asked by an abbot to uncover the truth behind a rather disturbing murder at his beloved abbey. The story is quick to adopt an investigative posture which not only involves all the hallmarks of a "whodunit" type story but also has Abo, and many other characters, questioning their own faith and the faith of others. The story is much more than just another detective yarn as Umberto Eco continues to depict scenes of spiritual debates, holy disorder, political corruption, religious rebellion, crimes of heresy and sexual misconduct which are as a contradictory to the life of a monk as the murderous crimes themselves.

There is much in this book to dissuade many from reading it in its entirety. The Name of the Rose is often cited as the bestseller that has never been read. There is much truth to this as I myself have often found that certain passages and lengthy debates would make one nod off as if listening to a sermon that carries with it a haze of sleepiness. No doubt many of the monks in this story have felt the same way too. There are many versus in Latin and references to historical religious figures that have no direct impact on the story but are only dished up to help Abo, and the reader, derive conclusions to many of questions found in the mind of a novice that are philosophical and metaphysical in nature. The Name of the Rose expounds on the correlations between order and chaos, much of which is linked directly to William's own ethics when carrying out his investigation of the abbey.

It is a hard book to read or follow because of its many Latin references, pseudo-religious-philosophical debates, but is as equally a hard book to forget or stop reading. No doubt without the "whodunit" elements this book would more suitable as special treatise hidden among the abbey's own Aedificium. Very few books leave you feeling somewhat attached to the story but The Name of the Rose ushers with it a very subtle relationship between you and William who acts as a farther type figure to Abo who is your eyes and ears in the story. Needless to say the actual impact of the book does not hit home until the final three or four pages. Everything else beforehand has been of interest to you but you don't quite know why. The book actually ends up posing more questions than it attempts to answer and this in itself is what is at the heart of The Name of the Rose. The final vestibule of assertion is made only in saying that nothing can be confirmed at all and good men should not seek to hold fast to Earthly possessions which eventually return to that from which they came. . . . including the story.

Appreciate it.