Hannibal

Rating:
Summary: Not Enough Hannibal Lecter!
Review: You're going to wonder how I mean that, considering he's in 80% of the book. But the fact remains that Hannibal is a more interesting character when he's imprisoned then when he's free. This book lacks all the wonderful tete-a-tetes of SOTL; instead, we are forced to learn how to train pigs to eat people. Lecter as a creature of Malevolence is pure brilliance; Lecter as a free "reformed" character is boring. I personally believe Harris screwed up royally when he decided to add a character "more evil" than Hannibal. As for style, I was annoyed in SOTL with Harris' writing techniques (switches to Present tense, etc.), but the strength of the story overrode the weakness of the style. It's a shame the same can't be said about this book.

Rating:
Summary: Shockingly poor story. I hated it.
Review: I took 2 days to read this, and avoided all spoilers of the plot. I wanted to enjoy it. I didn't. The plot was poorly paced, the whole section in Italy appears to have been draped across the main story for no other reason than to show us that Lecter is a man of refinement. Harris is clearly infatuated with the character of Lecter, but in showing us his mental thought processes and getting us inside his mind, he doesn't instill the same love of Lecter in us. Rather we see that Lecter is another psychopath with a messy childhood. Compare the scene in SotL where Lecter says "You can't reduce me to a series of impulses. Nothing happened to me. *I* happened."

Compare that with this travesty of a novel. No. In attempting to make us love his wet-dream of a character, he merely removes the mystique. Thoroughly awful book, but even moreso for fans of the original stories. Awful awful awful. I'd be embarressed to be Harris's editor right now. It was his job to rightly point out how bad this manuscript is.

Having paid 9 million for the rights, a movie is likely. I can't see Hopkins or Foster appearing in this rubbish, but a good scriptwriter could shave off 90% of this book, change the ending and make a decent movie out of it. (A bit like how the movie The Firm with Tom Cruise was salvaged from that terribly dull book about photo-copying.)

Rating:
Summary: Consumed by Dr Lecter
Review: I just spent most of a sunny weekend reading through "Hannibal". I did so because the story is compelling and written in much more "filmic" terms than any of Black Sunday, Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs. Harris pitches the intellectual content at a level that doesn't intrude unduly into the storytelling, he uses Italian sparingly and usually obviously, but in the case of the poetic quotations he resists the temptation to translate away from the native tongue in order to preserve it as poetry in the first place. However it is in the pacing, the scene shifting and the authenticity of his locations and characters that he excels. Yes, the story is extraordinary, perhaps even unbelievable to some of us, but life is also extraordinary and unbelievable at times. Don't forget that we're dealing with an extraordinary character in Dr Lecter, his life is by nature strange to most of us (I hope).

I have read criticism that this sequel offers fewer insights and perspectives on the character of Lecter whereas I believe that he becomes more multidimensional once he is free to interact in the "real world" again. The insight from the Silence of the Lambs regarding his extreme civility alongside his extreme violence (both physical and psychological) is developed and extended well. The gentility of Lecter's day-to-day life would be the envy of many, his intellectual capacity the envy of most of us. Harris wants us to want to be Lecter, wants us to identify with this person capable of so much evil. He tries to bring us around to accepting the character to some extent, he makes Lecter attractive, you know you'll be burned but you want to reach out anyway.

As for the ending. Well, it is made obvious that drugs are a factor during the dinner scene, so we can excuse ex-Agent Starling for her selection of courses, although the later scene does stretch the imagination somewhat. However you need to remember that all the ties binding Starling to the FBI are removed one-by-one, she has absolutely nothing to go back for, and thanks to Lecter's devious psychological work on Starling, she sees Lecter as the healing force for a great many other things that had held her in the past, associations with the death of her father.

I don't know whether it was Harris' intent, but the butterfly (or moth) that Clarice becomes in "Hannibal", particularly in the closing chapters, was certainly a chrysalis in "Silence of the Lambs". Lecter was always the flame.

Rating:
Summary: This sure isn't Silence of the Lambs
Review: So this isn't as creepy as Silence of the Lambs, but I just loved the exhilarating feeling I had while reading this. GO FOR IT!

Rating:
Summary: Not bad... but not that good either!
Review: After I managed to trudge through the Italian culture lesson, I thought Harris was building up to a classic ending. Not so. It was as though Harris was writing a school essay and decided to finish it as quickly as he could so he could get out to play. I had high hopes for this book following Red Dragon and Silence, but I'm afraid Dr. Lector simply out grew Harris. As for the ending, please... I don't think so. If this makes it to the big screen, it will take some performance from Hopkins to keep Dr. Lector the likeable cannible we all love, alive. The success of the film will depend on the actor who is to play Mason Verger, who was unfortunately the real star of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Very engrossing but very difficult. Lives with you.
Review: Hannibal is as well written as Silence of the Lambs but not in SOL's realistic vein. It is, in my opinion, extremely difficult to come to grips with this because of the deep affection many readers have for Hannibal and Clarice, an affection supported by the way many of us identified with SOL. It is difficult to identify with Hannibal. In my wildest dreams this is not how I imagined their future, not in my maddest romantic fantasies. It's difficult to accept. I have such affection for the Memphis Tennessee locations in SOL, for Quantico, for the Chesapeake area -I didn't realize how invested I felt in Clarice's career with the FBI and how hard it is to give that up in Hannibal. I didn't realize how invested I felt in the underlying romantic tension in Hannibal/Clarice's meetings in SOL, the unacknowledged friendship that sprang up within its "formal structure".

The first sequence in Hannibal - the drug bust gone wrong, the stagnation of Clarice's FBI career, Lector's letter of support and the introduction of Mason Verger -- put us on secure SOL footing. Well, okay, not Mason Verger - between his facial mutilation, his three mile long braid and his Dr. No electronic command center in his bedroom not to mention his sadistic psychological torture of the underpriveleged minority children he entertains - is over the top and then some. But we know where we are.

Then the action shifts to Florence, Italy, and the interior life of Pazzi, a Chief Inspector turned bounty hunter scheming to turn Lector over to Verger for big money. Pazzi has been unfairly wronged in his career too, and there's poignance in his love for his beautiful wife and his longing for the shores of the Chesapeake, but this side trip to Pazzi-World feels like a bloated digression. I was resisting every chapter of the Florence sojourn, everything I was discovering about Hannibal Lector. IMO, what we imagine about Lector, wonder about Lector, is more powerful than anything we learn about Lector. I prefer Harris to suggest the interior corridors of Lector's "memory palace" rather than take us - as he does - on a guided tour. Too much information! IMO it begins to reduce Lector. I also rolled my eyes at the news Lector was the son of a Lithuanian count and a "high born" Italian woman - oh hey, of course. God forbid there's anything non-aristocratic in Lector's background. His being the son of a count only proves his superiority, don't you know. There's a little ancestor worship, money worship, culture vultur-ing in this part of the book that has a little of the zeal of a convert about it - I wonder how Harris has been spending his "Silence" money. In other words, Lector's history is trite.

Then Lector is forced to flee Italy and finds himself in coach with a bunch of tourists. This got on my nerves at first as well, because Harris portrays the denizens of coach as ill-mannered, crude, and with lousy sanitary habits. Even the babies in coach are unpleasant. So different than those one imagines Harris imagines occupy first class. I can accept coach being totally uncomfortable with rotten food, I have more trouble imagining everyone in coach is ill bred, including the newborns.

But paradoxically, it is here that I suddenly felt re-connected to the Lector I first met in SOL. On that plane for the first time Lector isn't Superman and James Bond in one. I started to give in to what Harris was doing, I started to accept that I would get to know Lector as a man and not as the fabulous monster of Silence. There's a beautiful sequence in Mason Verger's bedroom among Verger, his sardonic (and weirdly lovable) sister Margot, Barney (the orderly from Silence), Clarice's FBI nemesis and a self-important psychiatrist. We're on familiar ground again here, and the dialogue, characterizations and one-upmanship are priceless. There's another sequence where Clarice is running in a Virginia State Park observed through field glasses by Lector -- absolutely beautiful. At this point I believe, without my realizing it at first, Harris won me over to this book, to telling this story from Lector's point of view. I began to view the Florence sequence in retrospect as Lector's dream - a dream he was able to realize and inhabit briefly - perfect order, perfect beauty - only to be thrown back into the messy contemporary world once more. Viewed like this, in retrospect, the Florence sequence works and resonates. There's also a description of Lector's baby sister in a tin tub, her pure heart, and her "star shaped hands" clapping Lector's face - what a beautiful and accurate description of a toddler's hands.

There's a whole process of grieving in reading Hannibal - that whole anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance process is going on while reading it, but I believe Harris does earn acceptance from the reader. My feelings began to be agitated as the book wound to a climax and I felt terribly sad. Not from disappointment with Hannibal, but as a consequence of the accumulated emotional power and poignance -- and difficulty - in Hanibal. IMO, it's a great book, but you're going to have to wrestle with accepting it.

Rating:
Summary: hannibal's cannibalized
Review: When I finished this book i had to ask myself what i really thought of the ending. Compared to the rest of the novel (which is wonderful) the ending leaves one in a state of utter disbelief. But whether that stems from the fact that it is a bad ending in the literary sense or in the theatrical sense is hard to say. I don't see how this novel could be made into a movie but on the other hand Harris does seem to have let Lector be Lector.

Rating:
Summary: After 10 years,it still isn't ready.
Review: I just cannot believe the anticipation I felt for this book is now replaced by head shaking confusion. I hated the first section of the book, but was won over by a second section that was simply classic Harris. The ending was absolutely ridiculous and completely neglectful of the characters he developed over 2 and 3/4 books. The final murder , though done with the old Lecter panache seems wasteful even for a homocidal maniac like the doctor. A lot of the problem comes from the amount of light put on Dr Lecter who loses something when we start to know him even a little. He was impenetrable and more interesting in the first 2 books. To tell the truth, I was hoping for a showdown between Lecter and Jack Crawford not another Hannibal /Starling encounter. This would not be a terribly interesting film even if it does get made. The moral of this story is supposed to be something about the evil inside all of us. Who knows? Thomas Harris obviously spends his time in a very dark place. I am actually looking forward to his next book to see if he can surprise us again now that the slate is clear. I hope that James Ellroy finshes his novel quickly, it is now the only book that I'm dying to read.

Rating:
Summary: Bad, very bad.
Review: After just finishing Thomas Harris' new addition to the Dr. Lecter saga, I am completely at a loss. I wish that I could bill the publishing company not only for the cost of the book, but for the time invested in the reading of it. At least in true Harris style it is a quick read. In my humble opinion Hannibal does not live up to the task of continuing the compelling saga created by Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. What a pity.

Rating:
Summary: Page turner from the start.
Review: I just finished the third installment of the Lecter books this afternoon and I must admit the ending was disappointing but what a good story. Granted I don't think it held the same gut renching realism that kept you up in he middle of the night and affraid to go downstairs in the dark. But, Hannibal definately was a good story with a delightful return of our favorite characters that Harris has held from us for so long. I hope he rights another. As much as I like Lecter he needs to die.