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A review by lindy_b
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
4.0
I admire this book a lot. Mostly because it completely avoids my common gripes about both historical fiction and detective fiction, two genres I find myself wishing I liked more than I do.
1) Most books claiming to be historical fiction are actually time travel stories, in that we have characters who think and act like modern day people dropped into the trappings of the past. Sometimes authors recognize the disjunction, highlight it, and it contributes to the theme of the novel, and that's great, but most of them don't seem to care and then I'm wondering what the point of reading/writing such fiction is in the first place. Eco takes a less common approach; the world and the characters' psychologies are obviously and intricately interwoven; these are potential people who could only have existed at a particular junction in time; Eco's doing everything he can do avoid the dissonance. This requires a ton of research and will upset readers who don't like that the characters are 'alienating.' For me, the alienation is what makes it worthwhile.
2) At some point in the past, I realized that, given that blood splatter analysis and psychological profiling have roughly equal statistical accuracy to phrenology and drowning someone and seeing if she floats, the only detective fiction that isn't going to annoy me is going to use the plot as a hanger to drape essential questions of epistemology off of because in these fictional situations there is no meaningful difference between the natural (or scientific) and the supernatural (or magic). This rarely happens and consequently I am frequently annoyed. In The Name of the Rose the plot is epistemology and its constraints and the setting means everyone's arguing about the super/natural.
3) This book is hilarious. [b:The Secret History|29044|The Secret History|Donna Tartt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451554846l/29044._SY75_.jpg|221359] is also hilarious, but people tend to act confused when I say this and I suspect the same may apply here. (There are several different levels to read them on, and one of them is are as deconstructive spoofs.)
I won't go around recommending that everyone must read The Name of the Rose or anything, but I'm glad I did.
1) Most books claiming to be historical fiction are actually time travel stories, in that we have characters who think and act like modern day people dropped into the trappings of the past. Sometimes authors recognize the disjunction, highlight it, and it contributes to the theme of the novel, and that's great, but most of them don't seem to care and then I'm wondering what the point of reading/writing such fiction is in the first place. Eco takes a less common approach; the world and the characters' psychologies are obviously and intricately interwoven; these are potential people who could only have existed at a particular junction in time; Eco's doing everything he can do avoid the dissonance. This requires a ton of research and will upset readers who don't like that the characters are 'alienating.' For me, the alienation is what makes it worthwhile.
2) At some point in the past, I realized that, given that blood splatter analysis and psychological profiling have roughly equal statistical accuracy to phrenology and drowning someone and seeing if she floats, the only detective fiction that isn't going to annoy me is going to use the plot as a hanger to drape essential questions of epistemology off of because in these fictional situations there is no meaningful difference between the natural (or scientific) and the supernatural (or magic). This rarely happens and consequently I am frequently annoyed. In The Name of the Rose the plot is epistemology and its constraints and the setting means everyone's arguing about the super/natural.
3) This book is hilarious. [b:The Secret History|29044|The Secret History|Donna Tartt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451554846l/29044._SY75_.jpg|221359] is also hilarious, but people tend to act confused when I say this and I suspect the same may apply here. (There are several different levels to read them on, and one of them is are as deconstructive spoofs.)
I won't go around recommending that everyone must read The Name of the Rose or anything, but I'm glad I did.