A review by directorpurry
Hannibal by Thomas Harris
3.0
Besides the ending, I like this book quite a bit. And honestly I feel kind of hypocritical saying it.
The writing I find very engaging. It plays with tense and point of view in a very particular way that many writers cannot get away with. It follows a lot of characters, but personally I didn't find the changing characters an issue. I actually enjoyed the pacing quite a bit.
But the treatment of LGBT and queer characters and personhood is... highly questionable, to say the least. There is one lesbian character, whose sexuality is highly implied to be the cause of past trauma. Additionally, she uses some slurs against another character. (In a weirdly confusing way??? I still don't quite understand that scene to be completely honest and I read it twice.) There are also so weird implications of transphobia. And while this was written in the late 90s, questionable treatment of queer characters is often apparent in Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels.
There is also one scene where an attempted rape is implied to be because the man had "no control" and like... S T O P.
No.
I will not buy your bs, sir. I don't have time for it.
This book does have a particular color apart from the previous two books, and it's clearly due to the popularity of The Silence of the Lambs film. (Which I love. Not going to lie, I watch it pretty often.) I think there are clear hallmarks of the influence of the film industry. There are also hints as to the contents of the fourth Lecter book, but I won't go into that here. Some of it kind of weakens Lecter's character. Especially a particular part of the climax that I won't spoil BUT.
But besides all of this, and my disappointment in the end of Clarice's role on the page, I really, really enjoyed this book. I like Harris' writing style and I like reading about Hannibal Lecter.
The writing I find very engaging. It plays with tense and point of view in a very particular way that many writers cannot get away with. It follows a lot of characters, but personally I didn't find the changing characters an issue. I actually enjoyed the pacing quite a bit.
But the treatment of LGBT and queer characters and personhood is... highly questionable, to say the least. There is one lesbian character, whose sexuality is highly implied to be the cause of past trauma. Additionally, she uses some slurs against another character. (In a weirdly confusing way??? I still don't quite understand that scene to be completely honest and I read it twice.) There are also so weird implications of transphobia. And while this was written in the late 90s, questionable treatment of queer characters is often apparent in Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels.
There is also one scene where an attempted rape is implied to be because the man had "no control" and like... S T O P.
No.
I will not buy your bs, sir. I don't have time for it.
This book does have a particular color apart from the previous two books, and it's clearly due to the popularity of The Silence of the Lambs film. (Which I love. Not going to lie, I watch it pretty often.) I think there are clear hallmarks of the influence of the film industry. There are also hints as to the contents of the fourth Lecter book, but I won't go into that here. Some of it kind of weakens Lecter's character. Especially a particular part of the climax that I won't spoil BUT.
But besides all of this, and my disappointment in the end of Clarice's role on the page, I really, really enjoyed this book. I like Harris' writing style and I like reading about Hannibal Lecter.