Rating: 
Summary: Una brillante creación
Review: "El rinoceronte del Papa" es una construcción novelesca impecable. Toda novela es una creación; todo novelista es un dios. Lawrence Norfolk ha creado una obra sin mancha. Personajes llenos de vida, una trama siempre viva, un manejo exquisito del lenguaje, un final increíblemente satisfactorio.
Rating: 
Summary: Big, Unwieldly, but Fun
Review: "The Pope's Rhinoceros" has been called Lawrence Norfolk's second novel. I don't believe its value comes mainly from its novel-hood. Rather, it has some amazing, even mind-blowing scenes tied together by recurring characters, some of which are intriguing or amusing, some less so. The storyline is not easy to summarize (the book is like a very rich cake that cannot hold it shape). The time is the high Renaissance (early XVI century). Niklot, our hero, an aboriginal native of the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea, barely survives lynching by crazed locals because of his heathenish rituals. Having escaped an attempt to drown him (his mother was not so lucky) he wanders through the Central German forests for several years, living as a wild-child. He is captured by a wandering band of fraudsters who make a living by pretending to be retreating soldiers. Eventually the villagers of a town they intended to swindle turn on them, and turn them over to a real army, the Spanish one. Niklot, now named Salvestro, is befriended by a dim-witted giant (Bernardo) and by an older soldier, Groot. All take part in the attempted siege of the town of Prato, conducted by the Spaniards on behalf of the head of the Medici family, the youthful Cardinal Giovanni de Medicis, son of Lorenzo de Magnificent. For some unnamed reason (as is common throughout the book) the Cardinal pretends to accept Prato's surrender through an agreement with the city's bigwig, Aldo Tebaldi, but in reality allows the city to be plundered by the Spanish troops, and everything ends in an orgy of raping and murder that eventually extends to Tebaldi's family, who were being guarded by Salvestro, Bernardo and Groot (headed by a Spaniard named Colonel Diego). The Cardinal attempts to blame Salvestro et alii for the Tebaldi family massacre, but our hero and Bernardo manage to escape led by one of the more appealing characters in the book, a young proto-witch named Amalia. Colonel Diego and Groot are blamed for the escape of the supposed "murderers", and are dishonored. Salvestro leads Bernardo back to Usedom in an attempt to recoup their fortune by fishing out a treasure that was supposedly buried at the bottom of the sea when the heathen city of Vineta (located on a small peninsula off the coast of Usedom) sank during Henry the Lion's attempted siege over two hundred years before. The attempt fails miserably, and the villagers again try to kill Salvestro, whom they recognize as Niklot. Both Salvestro and Bernardo are saved by an order of monks, whose monastery is collapsing into the sea. Brother Joerg convinces Salvestro to lead them to Rome, where they will obtain some unnamed type of help in the rebuilding of their monastery (money? architects? who knows?). Salvestro obliges but Rome does not welcome the monks or their guides. The former Cardinal de Medicis, now crowned as Pope Leo X is not interested in anything as pedestrian as monks and monasteries, but is only concerned with obtaining a rhinoceros, which he hopes will fight with elephant Hanno, donated to him by the Portuguese King Manoel. So the Usedom monks scatter, some becoming builders, some vagrants, and father Joerg is eventually left almost alone as he tries to obtain an audience with the Pope for months and months. Meanwhile, Salvestro and Bernardo (along with their former enemy, colonel Diego) are forced to sign up on a doomed voyage to Africa (guided by an African princess whom they found living as a slave to a high-class prostitute in Rome) to fetch a rhino for His Holiness. The voyage and adventures in Africa (not perhaps the best rendered part of the book)are partially successful, in that they manage to bring the beast back, but dead due to a shipwreck off the coast of La Spezia. The Pope, grateful even for a dead Rhino, confers to Salvestro any wish he might choose to express. He expresses a wish to hear the Pope's confession, which refers to His Holiness's shameful actions during the Prato campaign. Then Salvestro, brother Joerg and another monk returh to Usedom, where Salvestro is finally murdered by the locals. The book, as has been hinted is very uneven. Many scenes are memorable for a sort of nightmarish quality and exageration that is sometimes worthy of Rabelais: a feast in a Roman Church during which several live animals are torn apart and devoured by the parishioners, a poetical competition on a flooded stadium (naumachia), a hunting party led by Pope Leo, the crass jokes of Cardinals Bibbiena and Dovizio (historical characters), a concert by ur-punk band, King Caspar and the Mauritians. The description of a Roman potentate's labyrinthine palace is not short of Eco's library in "The Name of The Rose". The elaborate rendition of the life of a colony of rats, or the routine in the Papal kitchens, are nauseating but beguiling, and again not short of Patrick Suesskind's masterful "Perfume". Some things work less well. The character of Brother Joerg is inconsistent. At the beginning he is a forceful geography teacher, but then he becomes a virtual blind and mute wreck who allows his flock to be dispersed and eventually lost. The rivalry between Portuguese and Spaniards over the division of the globe between the two naval powers is not clarified, and it could be without loss to the plot. The efficient killer Rufo is left hanging (he wanders off page about two thirds of the book and never turns up again). As noted above, the portions that take place aboard ships, or in Goa or Africa are not as interesting as those that occur in Europe, and neither are the characters or the episodes featured. I couldn't see why the Usedom monastery wasn't rebuilt, why bullying monk Gerhardt did not get his comeuppance (unlike Groot, who got his to the hilt), and why Salvestro returned to get slaughtered. Or, indeed, why the hugely likeable Bernardo was not allowed to join a wandering troupe of dwarfs as the mandatory giant, as seemed his destiny at some point. So why do I give this book four stars? Because the good parts are very good, and the bad parts are much better than the good parts of other books I've read recently. Because many of the characters are unforgettable. Amalia and Bernardo are both excellent, and the Pope is masterful, along with his cohort of drunken cardinals and cynical minor bureaucrats. The demented noble Roman Colonna is formidable, and the S-M red-headed goddess, La Cavallerizza Sanguinosa has an undefined role but always manages to make a splash when she turns up. Norfolk is a man with a tough stomach, who knows his story, and is not afraid of the baroque. Minimalism has its uses, but historical fiction is not one of them.
Rating:
Summary: Very well written, but a letdown after Lempiere's Dictionary
Review: After reading "Lempiere's Dictionary," one of my favorite books of all time, and then perusing the album cover for "The Pope's Rhinoceros," I thought that the total enjoyment of reading it was as sure as rain in Seattle. Well, lo and behold, as the sunshine reemerged in the Puget Sound region, so I have to admit, though seeing the brilliance of the writing, I was a bit disappointed in "The Pope's Rhinoceros." Though at times quite compelling and, in the end, definitely worth the work, there were too many times when I had to concentrate even more than I am usually willing to get a grasp of where Mr. Norfolk was proceeding. There were too many times when whole passages would begin, and it was not until about 2 or 3 pages into them that you even knew who the characters were. The tale could have used a bit more unfettered narrative drive, and a few less characters. Yet, despite all the objections, the book was still quite compelling and very exciting at times. But after "Lempiere," ....
Rating: 
Summary: Try -Silvio Bedini's The Pope's Elephant- instead
Review: I agree with the other reviewers who gave The Pope's Rhinocerous one star. The writing is unpleasant, pompous, and inflated, making it almost embarrassing to read. I finished chapter one but could stomach no more. I do recommend a modest alternative though: Silvio Bedini's The Pope's Elephant, which relates a wealth of facts and a few enjoyable anecdotes about Hanno the elephant. It includes a chapter about a rhinocerous.
Rating: 
Summary: This book's definitely not for everyone...
Review: I enjoyed Norfolk's first book, "Lempriere's Dictionary," a great deal, although it requires a tremendous amount of memory and attention to detail to really follow the twists & turns of the plot: It was very rich and satisfying, and it finally "came together." For me, "The Pope's Rhinoceros" had the difficulty of "LD" but not the pay-off: At the end, I still couldn't fully understand the motivations of the different characters, why they made decisions one way and not the other, and so on. If "LD" had something of the character of a murder mystery, then "TPR" had the character of a murder mystery without a murder: You keep waiting for the sun to rise and dispel the fog, but find out that in the end, the fog is just smog and won't be dispelled. The book does repay careful reading: For example, there is an entire bread-eating scene that is more-or-less incomprehensible if you don't know what "spurred wheat" is, and aren't curious enough to look it up. (Hint: You may need to look at a real dictionary, not just what's available for free on-line.) Maybe if I had caught every one of these subtle hints, I would have understood the story better - or maybe not. My basic feeling is that the publisher rushed Norfolk to finish his second book before it had received the polishing that his first displayed. I hope this doesn't happen again: He's proven to me that he's too good a literary craftsman to be wasting his time on rush-jobs.
Rating:
Summary: The Pope's Rhinoceros...
Review: I started reading Lawrence Norfolk's second Novel on a flight from London to Houston in early April 2004. I finished it on July 18. The last book that took me as long to read was Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses". Both books are fascinating, but at times immensely tedious. I intend to read both again after I retire!
I found the style of the book descriptive in the extreme. This worked in some instances, like the description of the rainforest somewhere in Goa?/Africa?, but often was at the expense of good story telling and a cohesive narative. The reader is very likely to lose sense of times, places, events and characters as some of the naration is actually a parade of memories taking place inside some character's mind. As a result, the reader might read a whole chapter without having any sense of time, place, event, etc.
As has been said by others, the ending was rushed and was in no way in proportion to the less improtant but extremely verbose descriptions given elsewhere.
Some of the likeable characters were treated unsympathetically. For example, can someone tell me what happened to Bernardo whose fortunes we followed in detail most of the way, but who suddenly disappeared without any fuss.
Rating:
Summary: The Pope's Rhinoceros...
Review: I started reading Lawrence Norfolk's second Novel on a flight from London to Houston in early April 2004. I finished it on July 18. The last book that took me as long to read was Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses". Both books are fascinating, but at times immensely tedious. I intend to read both again after I retire!
I found the style of the book descriptive in the extreme. This worked in some instances, like the description of the rainforest somewhere in Goa?/Africa?, but often was at the expense of good story telling and a cohesive narative. The reader is very likely to lose sense of times, places, events and characters as some of the naration is actually a parade of memories taking place inside some character's mind. As a result, the reader might read a whole chapter without having any sense of time, place, event, etc.
As has been said by others, the ending was rushed and was in no way in proportion to the less improtant but extremely verbose descriptions given elsewhere.
Some of the likeable characters were treated unsympathetically. For example, can someone tell me what happened to Bernardo whose fortunes we followed in detail most of the way, but who suddenly disappeared without any fuss.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute Brilliance!
Review: Lawrence Norfolk is one of the only modern masters of language and storytelling we have, and I believe that we should not only appreciate it but praise it as well. As with his first novel "Lepmpriere's Dictionary", which was a story of strange twisting plots and a great reservoir for historical mystery, "The Pope's Rhinoceros" is only the best book to follow. It of course has its strange tangents that we, as an audience, are learning to be the style of the great author, and minor plots that boggle the mind even after the last page has been read. There are things too reminiscent of Lempriere's such as the character of Septimus whom we are so intrigued by but so uninformed about, we get a new view on this angelic character and only find that we are closer to understanding without even a new hint as to what it means. His, Norfolk's, ability to write so detailed on certain things as the way of life of a fish in the sea, a colony of rats, or the history of a river or strange occurrences on remote islands, is impeccable. To achieve through writing alone, an enchantment that will devour your reader, without even the elements of a story is not an easy task and yet Norfolk produces it in the blink of an eye, and makes it appear all too natural. I think anyone would terribly enjoy this book, and those who would not are just those who become aggrivated when a piece of work forces them to think a little. The only negative of the book that I can even fathom is that he has so few books under his belt that when you finish Lempriere's and the Pope's who will be left waiting impatienly, clawing at and climbing the walls, for his next work to be published.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute Brilliance!
Review: Lawrence Norfolk is one of the only modern masters of language and storytelling we have, and I believe that we should not only appreciate it but praise it as well. As with his first novel "Lepmpriere's Dictionary", which was a story of strange twisting plots and a great reservoir for historical mystery, "The Pope's Rhinoceros" is only the best book to follow. It of course has its strange tangents that we, as an audience, are learning to be the style of the great author, and minor plots that boggle the mind even after the last page has been read. There are things too reminiscent of Lempriere's such as the character of Septimus whom we are so intrigued by but so uninformed about, we get a new view on this angelic character and only find that we are closer to understanding without even a new hint as to what it means. His, Norfolk's, ability to write so detailed on certain things as the way of life of a fish in the sea, a colony of rats, or the history of a river or strange occurrences on remote islands, is impeccable. To achieve through writing alone, an enchantment that will devour your reader, without even the elements of a story is not an easy task and yet Norfolk produces it in the blink of an eye, and makes it appear all too natural. I think anyone would terribly enjoy this book, and those who would not are just those who become aggrivated when a piece of work forces them to think a little. The only negative of the book that I can even fathom is that he has so few books under his belt that when you finish Lempriere's and the Pope's who will be left waiting impatienly, clawing at and climbing the walls, for his next work to be published.
Rating:
Summary: Imagination meets Erudition
Review: Lawrence Norfolk's vivid imagination goes amok in this, his second novel. The characters are fantastic and utterly believable. His knowledge of early 16th century Europe and the religious and political strife therein make for a lovely canvas upon which this hefty tome is created.
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