The Name of the Rose

If this weren’t a book club book, I would have DNF’ed so fast. I’m thoroughly convinced the author wrote this book solely to flex his knowledge of 14th century Catholicism. Many of the chapters added not a single meaningful thing to the plot and were tortuous to read. Finding enjoyable parts of this book was like panning for gold and just about as successful. That being said, it’s clearly very highly regarded so maybe it’s just not for me.

I've finished. I'm not rating it though because I just don't feel like I should. I didn't dislike this, but I didn't really like it either. I feel like I understood very little of it - all the religious and philosophical stuff went over my head. :/ I'm glad to have read it though because I'd always heard about it. It didn't live up to what I expected though.

Trigger warnings: Rape, homophobia, misogyny, sexual coercion, descriptions of torture, mutilation, executions by burning, infanticide

This was a very solid 3.5 stars for me, no higher and no lower. This book bamboozled me for the most part, so steeped in medieval Catholic theology as it was, but the mystery aspect of it was compelling and thrilling when it did shine through. It was a dense and sometimes difficult read and not one I would easily recommend to just about anyone. I only have extremely superficial knowledge of theology and almost none whatsoever of the religious politics of Europe in this time period, so a lot of the long, long debates and discussions in this book went straight over my head, but at least the mystery aspect kept me going.

The story is ostensibly told as if it had been a lost manuscript discovered some time during WW2, written by the monk Adso of Melk in 14th century Italy during his declining years. He writes of a time when he was a novice, probably around 14-16 years old, and under the mentorship of William of Baskerville. Together, they arrive at an abbey in Northern Italy where the abbot requests William to once again don the hat of an inquisitor and investigate the mysterious death of one of his young monks, Adelmo, who had apparently fallen to his death from a window. A series of deaths in the abbey follows.

I really don't know enough about the politics and theology of the time to comment much about the broader plot point of the book with all the different Catholic factions at each other's throat and yelling at each other that the other camp(s) were heretics and harboured the Antichrist. All that really struck me was that in this endless conflict, there is a ton of brutality of human against human, and so so often it's the innocent and the simple who are caught in the crossfire and made to pay the price despite having literally done nothing except being manipulated without knowing better. Deaths may have happened in this book, but none of them were near as violent as what was described in this book, of the deaths, torture, and executions that happened elsewhere.

Another thing that really bothered me was the incredible misogyny and treatment of women here. Perhaps Eco was going for a period-accurate mindset here, where women are mostly treated as “vessels of the Devil” simply because they present temptations to men (of course men are blameless /s). If they aren't diabolical vessels, then a woman must be an actual saint. There is no in-between. Period-accurate though it might be, it was just really really really annoying and discomfiting to read when it presented itself. The only little redeeming factor, which wasn't nearly enough to redeem the whole, was when Adso did call out the injustice that the village girl was condemned to death for what was clearly the fault and machinations of Salvatore and Remigio, but all he could do was really just cry himself to sleep and then forget about it. Even William couldn't do or say anything because that misogyny and injustice is just so deeply entrenched in their society that speaking out against it publicly would only have meant their own deaths in similar ways rather than changing anything or saving anyone.

On a lighter note, I was surprised by how much this book paralleled Sherlock Holmes and I don't believe it was a coincidence. It's kind of a random thing for Eco to add in to this book but I'm glad that it was there - if the mystery had been any less thrilling, I'm not sure if I could've waded through all the denseness of the theology in it.

The ending was a little surprising to me and I did enjoy the analysis of it: When William calls out the fact that he (and probably us as readers too) was so easily misled by the seductive theory of an orderly method to the killings, that it was just one murderer behind everything and someone who had premeditated it to coincide with the trumpets of the Apocalypse. It all fit a very nice pattern which was turned on its head in the end. ”I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.” A very nice and apt conclusion for mystery readers who are used to expecting neat and orderly solutions to these things.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is probably the greatest work of historical fiction set in Medieval Europe, and if that sometimes makes it difficult, pedantic, overly symbolic and a dragging theological treatise, either learn to deal with it and even enjoy it, or else forever abandon this extremely interesting but deathly hostile period and place. As a history enthusiast, popular media always disappoint me with their grim image of the past, the Dark Ages being quite literally dark and dirty, the average peasant having shit smeared on his face. The truth is very different. Bright colors were universally loved, churches were still decorated with extremely detailed Orthodox style, not to mention that people outside great cities actually bathed because they thought diseases were transmitted through scent. It was a time of constant geopolitical changes, of actual progress in many fields, but also of great spiritual stagnation. The darkness was spreading in the hearts and minds of men and women, forever looking at the ground and interpreting everything through the lenses of Scripture, always awaiting an Apocalypse that would never come.
link to full review

This is a third re-read after thirty years, and it was illuminating. I can look back and see where my occasional love of rather convoluted, somewhat posturing erudite fiction comes from. I need a narrative thread (whodunnit in this case, but historical or scifi works great otherwise) but then i don't really care how fast or slow the plot meanders as long as I enjoy the ride. Hence i love Stephenson or Mantel. Eco was a very good writer who delighted in knowledge and symbols but you don't have to care about any of the untranslated latin passages to enjoy the book. Cross the 100 page mark and you are in classic Murder Mystery territory but will learn about an important period of the pre-reformation church tensions Franciscans and Benedictines, between the Papacy in Rome vs Avignon, or Avignon vs the Holy Roman Empire.

I read this during one of my rare periods of being interested in church history, philosophy, and morality debates. The murder mystery is pretty fun and set in a monastery with some good twists. While solving the mystery, there are numerous, lengthy debates about morality, church doctrine, philosophy, and if laughter is ‘good'. Very lengthy.

The Name of the Rose was a tough, tough read. The prose is very dense, often archaic, and interspersed with an alarming amount of untranslated Latin. I found the mystery at its center to be very compelling, as well as the themes undergirding the book's conflicts. It's as beautiful and labyrinthine as the abbey where its events take place, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a book to get immersed in.

Wow!!! Eco gets a lot of shit for being deliberately dense, so I was intimidated going into this... only to get a really bright, light-of-foot narrative. He has a real fluidity and complexity of thought to envy. Really enjoyed the very thoughtful and interesting author's notes, where he specifically mentions that he writes for his and the reader's pleasure.

At first I was a little worried by the preface and set-up, but once I got past the conceit of the novel's presentation, I rather enjoyed this book. It was far better than the 1986 Sean Connery film version of it.

William of Baskerville is essentially a 13th Century Sherlock Holmes, and Eco doesn't even try to disguise that fact. The narrator, Adso of Melk, is a good Doctor Watson stand-in. The mystery is intriguing, and it the denouement is powerful.

I can't believe Eco never bothered to give William of Baskerville a sequel. It feels like his story is unfishined. But, nevertheless, it is a solid literary mystery.

4 stars

Although I dislike murder mystery stories overall, I initially thought that a murder mystery set in a monastery would be an atmospheric and comfortable read. It fulfilled that expectation, more or less, but I couldn???t get into the theological debates much, on account of me not being a god-loving Christian and all. Overall, the plot is engaging, the prose is very descriptive and even humorous, for instance, when a group of monks did not agree about whether Christ espoused poverty or not, and started pulling each other???s beards.
I recommend you read it if you enjoy theological discussion on sin and virtue, or you would like a mystery in a non-standard setting.
P.S. The untranslated parts were novel, but a little pretentious and quite annoying to follow, as I had to read translations on a website every time they came up.

My first impression after I finished reading this book was: Well, Hollywood did over action shit everything, even back then, when I thought they made good movies.

Anyway, my first book from Umberto Eco and I choose this one basically because I knew the movie. I really enjoyed it, but there are parts that need your 150% concentration or you will miss out parts and get lost in the rest of the page.

I am not giving it five stars because I thought there was a bit “umpf” missing. Really can't put my finger on it, but I just can't give it top marks.

Still, I loved it, and I am looking forward to read more books from him.

La novela más perfecta que leído. Nunca me imaginé tan inmerso en la vida de los monjes franciscanos, intrigado por un crimen extraño y simbólico en medio de una abadía misteriosa que contiene una biblioteca prohibida. Una ambientación muy poderosa y culta sobre la época medieval. Sentí demasiadas cosas. Habla del fascismo, de la intelectualidad y la sabiduría, de la sobreorganización de aquellos que creen custodiar el saber, de la extrañeza de la religión, del lenguaje y los simbolismos y de cómo afectan nuestra historia. Un libro inmenso que crece más entre más lo piensas. Estoy muy impresionado y conmovido. Estos libros son inmortales.