Hannibal

Rating:
Summary: Completely unpredictable...
Review: After reading the reviews from the Amazon fans, it seems clear that this book is not unanimous in the way it's rated. But, it certainly draws either extremely positive or extremely negative vibes, whatever way you look at it. I found the book incredibly entertaining, rivetting and difficult to close. Some readers may not have liked this follow up because of the switch in angles Thomas Harris takes...Hannibal and Clarice Starling are no longer the characters we once knew. They've evolved, changed, muted into new personas...after all, if the reader expected to see exactly the same story as Silence of the Lambs, would he want to go out and spend the money on reading something he's already seen before? Thomas Harris has understood the need to develop these cult characters. We take a ride into Hannibal's fantasties, the more positive aspects of his personality, and believe it or not, we feel a little closer to the psychopath once the book has drawn to an end! Clarice is no longer the hero of the story; she's almost relinquished to the supporting role of the book. She spends most of her time soul searching, and ends up finding her way with her enemy, Dr Lecter. Of all of the endings I could expect or dream up, the one Harris concludes on, literally blew my mind away. This is the most unexpected turn of the story anyone could possibly imagine! I don't know whether the movie will manage to recreate so dramatically the colorful scenarios, the intricate web of stories Harris writes in this book, but all movie goers need to read this book first before watching it on the big screen...

Rating:
Summary: This book had so much potential!
Review: Because I enjoyed The Silence of the Lambs, I really looked forward to Hannibal. And given the amount of time the author put into the tale, I truly expected something magnificent. In some ways, it is. Mr. Harris writes with clarity, with an eye for the minute detail and also beautiful imagery. However there is no consistency in the behavior of main character, Clarice Starling. Some of the things he had Clarice doing I would never have imagined her doing in a million years. Don't let me get started on the amount of gratuitous violence...I'd be here all day. Just suffice it to say this book is possibly the most gross piece of literature I've ever had the displeasure of reading. It seems the author wanted us to feel sympathy for the monster, Hannibal Lecter. I have no compassion for a man who eats his fellow man. I'm truly sorry I couldn't give this five stars. If I were grading it solely on the writer's ability to compose wonderful sentences, paragraphs, I'd indeed give it five stars. But a writer has a responsibility do much more than entertain. There is no human feeling in this book. If you like suspense and horror, I suggest you read a Dean Koontz book. He's an excellent writer of this sort of story, and he manages to write with compassion. The end of this tale is a travesty! I do not write spoilers. But see if you don't agree with me. I felt totally cheated with this sophomoric effort at riding off into the sunset and ,frankly, thought both the writer and Clarice Starling had lost their minds! No, I definitely don't recommend this read. And I'm not putting my name on this review because I don't want my close friends to know I read Hannibal!

Rating:
Summary: Funny
Review: It's funny, reading these online reviews -- the enraged one-star people and the amazed five-star people, battling it out for the spin on Hannibal.

Even the critics are doing the same -- Stephen King gives a rave in the New York Times, while USA Today screams about the Columbine shootings and derides the book as trash.

Outrage, amazement. Aren't the best works of art the ones that polarize the audience?

Hannibal -- despite the rather hasty copyediting job that one reader pointed out -- is a stunning piece of horror fiction. It is not for those who read Patricia Corn-whatnot and Dean Koontz. It is not for the airplane paperback crowd.

This is not meant to sound snobby. I read trash too. But this is not a literary suspense novel like Red Dragon, nor a breakneck pop thriller like Silence of the Lambs. It is a horrific and disturbing piece of work that's very well written.

As for the ending (and shame on Salon for that pointless spoiler story that reads like a rough draft for Entertainment Weekly), I think of it as a brave and shocking twist. Harris begins the first chapter with punchy, bare, standard-issue action novel prose ... then, slowly, turns the novel into something very different, something very unexpected and ... horrifying.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: So many years after "Silence", maybe I expected too much. But I feel that in "Hannibal", Thomas Harris doesn't stay true to the characters he created. First he kills off John Brigham, then Jack Crawford. Then, as if that weren't enough, Clarice's entire personality gets a remolding. Granted, some mind-altering drugs were involved, but still...the denouement was extremely hard to swallow (pun intended). I found it a cheap, sexually-oriented ploy worthy only of Fred Chilton, not Clarice Starling. We are supposed to LIKE Hannibal now? Like he's just a misunderstood guy with continental tastes, and the rest of us poor plebes couldn't possibly understand? The "gore" that is so hyped is of the variety that just gives me the rolling-eyed, "oh, right!" rather than the creepy, skin-crawly, heart pounding, horrified sensation that the even more violent "Silence" gave me. And Barney seemed a noble character in "Silence", now he's just a con artist and a thief? Tsk! The descriptions of Florence are exquisite, but don't make up for a facile story. Conclusion: a long-anticipated, but terribly disappointing book. Clarice, we thought we knew ye!

Rating:
Summary: implausible ending ruins book
Review: The ending of this book is so implausible that it effectively ruins the book. (I am about to write about the ending, so if you don't want to know about it, don't read further.) Agent Starling's transformation at the end was completely out of character, and an insult to readers who had read the previous 500 pages. She is changed from being an independent, moral and law-abiding FBI agent to an amoral cannibal who without the slightest hesitation eats the brains of a fellow FBI agent, and then seduces her sociopathic captor and enters a long-term relationship with him.

One of the things I appreciated about Silence of the Lambs was the psychological sophistication of the plot. And what I dislike so much about this book is that the author, for some reason, goes to the opposite extreme and creates an ending -- presumably for shock value -- which is not supported by anything that precedes it. As a professional writer who is capable of better work, Harris should be ashamed of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Worst book of all time?
Review: The thing that stands out the most for me after reading this abomination is the obvious contempt, no, LOATHING Thomas Harris has for his readers. I believe he was so sickened by the 'fan mail' he has received for the Hannibal Lecter character that he decided to write a novel that would make his contempt so palpable that even the densest reader would detect it.

And so we get crowds of tourists moved to lust at the sight of torture implements...Gratuitous slurs at gun show attendees...A little waspish slap at the people who tried to impeach WJC...And so on.

The last two may give a clue as to the deeper roots of Harris' hatred : He has developed what I call Stephen King Syndrome. Remember the early King stories, in which he, the erstwhile struggling teacher/writer showed his knowledge of, and sympathy for, the struggles of lower middle class folks? Only to be replaced a few years down the road(circa IT, another bad book) by a man who slipped little remarks into the text to let us know how familiar he was with celebrities and their lifestyle, and an attitude towards 'poor folks' that slid first into pity, then contempt, then outright jeering. Thomas Harris is no doubt a very wealthy man now, and he probably moves in social circle where the members pride themselves on how much more "enlightened" they are than average Americans.It's rubbed off on him....Read the great Red Dragon, and his sensitive portrayals of even minor characters, who were rarely affluent. Notice Harris'; grasp of an overlooked prejudice (Since only white racism against "people of color" counts, y'know) : Contempt for poor whites, and the concomitant feelings of inferiority, strivings, and dislike of the wealthy people born poor (Will Graham, Clarice Starling) have. Then notice the little slams on the minor characters in Hannibal (eg the gun show attendees).It's as if everything Middle America admires-character, mores, politics, EVERYTHING-has become so anathema to Harris, he has to write a 500+ page novel in which all Good is shown to be nothing but sublimated Evil (a decades' old cliche) and in which no character is worthy of respect. Just to let us know how contemptible we, and everybody but Thomas Harris, truly are.

The book itself reads like it was read into a dictaphone and printed without revision. How could the man who wrote such splendid, smooth, even at times beautiful prose as we read in Red Dragon and SOTL write so poorly as he did in Hannibal? More contempt for the "ignorant readers who won't notice a difference"? I don't know which is worse, the banal nature of the majority of the book's prose, or the straining-for-effect pretentious drivel as he strives for profundity (eg, the passages in HL's mind (the memory palace) , or the very last chapter of the book re : HL's and CS's relationship.)

I agree with the reviewer who said that Harris has fallen in love with HL. He has created a character with certain superiorities of mind-and because he created him, TH now thinks those qualities are HIS. Another reason to despise the "lesser beings" out there in the real world! And Harris' attempts to-what, make the reader SYMPATHIZE with HL!?!-are grotesque : Spoiled rich brat brought up to regard everybody else as there to serve him loses his family in WWII . This causes an existential crisis , he loses all belief in God-and then goes out and inflicts the same pain of loss on others, but without the excuse of trying to avoid starvation, as the killers of his sister could claim. Nice ripoff of the Chikatilo story, but otherwise forced and trite.

One thing about Hannibal that was handled well : The descent of Clarice Starling into psychopathology. It is foreshadowed well by two earlier passages that reveal her growing alienation : when she looks at the overweight nurse she is interviewing and realizes she's grown tired of a lack of "stylishness" around her, and when the sight of a man butchered like a deer almost makes her giggle. HL didn't have to do too much with the drugs and hypnosis to bring CS to his (and TH's ) state of mind : contempt for others as lesser things. It was already there in embryo. She sublimated it into a drive to protect, while HL preys...But the way childhood trauma-sudden death of loved ones- had warped them both in a similar manner is there before the drug-induced breakdown , and rebuilding into a sociopath.

All that was good in RD and SOTL-the prose, the apparent insider's knowledge about FBI procedures, the sensitive handling of characters-is absent from Hannibal. Sadly, I hope Harris never writes another novel. And I wish I could cleanse my mind of Hannibal : It retroactively taints two fine novels that should have remained without a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: Loyal fans will like it; casual fans wait for the movie
Review: This book is to literature what Star Wars: Episode I is to movies, and Thomas Harris and George Lucas seem to share common struggles in living up to the hype. Harris revives much of what readers loved about Red Dragon and the Silence of the Lambs -- most notably the eerie insights into the twisted psyche of a serial killer, but also the deliciously creative confrontations and killings, and enviable attention to detail. Sadly, though, he seems to forget much of what we loved about the earlier books, like the brilliant and relentless chase offered by the FBI, and tightly contained if original plots. Harris seems to have one eye on the inevitable movie (consciously or not...). Starling is too good, the rest of the FBI is implausibly bad, Lecter is superhuman, and the band of villains is farfetched and ultimately bungling. The novel moves quickly and the Starling/Lecter subplot certainly keeps the pages turning, but the climax is sadly predictable and leaves an untidy mess of loose ends. Like Lucas, Harris struggles to escape the shadow of his earlier works. But who wouldn't?