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A review by lbarsk
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
3.0
Let's get one thing clear: Umberto Eco is a brilliant writer and a master storyteller. I wish that I had read this book in its original Italian, because that would probably have been just an awesome experience from a literary perspective.
What made this book only three stars for me was a combination of its denseness and the extreme amounts of anti-Semitism. I KNOW that it's a book about how the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written, and I understand that Eco is trying to shine a light on that period of time in order to comment upon it--which I think is effective, and exposing that madness is important--but still. For someone whose religious and cultural heritage is as important as it is to me, this book is a bit hard to stomach. Reading that much "Jews are gross and terrible in literally every way" sentiment is just a lot. I know that Simonini, the main character, is not supposed to be a sympathetic protagonist, and reading his exploits were interesting, but it was hard for me to even appreciate or follow his character because of the vitriol that he spews from page one.
The other issue was, as I said above, the denseness; the book starts off a little slow and Eco's paragraphs are, sometimes, very long and detail-oriented. Again, I think this is where reading it in the original Italian (which is syntactically different enough from English for their sentence structure to make a real difference) would have been easier. I think perhaps it would've been better if I had read another book by Eco first, then tackled The Prague Cemetery.
Overall, not a bad read at all, and a story that you want to see through to its conclusion. It's just hard to get through at times, and that took away from the good parts of the book and the writing.
What made this book only three stars for me was a combination of its denseness and the extreme amounts of anti-Semitism. I KNOW that it's a book about how the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written, and I understand that Eco is trying to shine a light on that period of time in order to comment upon it--which I think is effective, and exposing that madness is important--but still. For someone whose religious and cultural heritage is as important as it is to me, this book is a bit hard to stomach. Reading that much "Jews are gross and terrible in literally every way" sentiment is just a lot. I know that Simonini, the main character, is not supposed to be a sympathetic protagonist, and reading his exploits were interesting, but it was hard for me to even appreciate or follow his character because of the vitriol that he spews from page one.
The other issue was, as I said above, the denseness; the book starts off a little slow and Eco's paragraphs are, sometimes, very long and detail-oriented. Again, I think this is where reading it in the original Italian (which is syntactically different enough from English for their sentence structure to make a real difference) would have been easier. I think perhaps it would've been better if I had read another book by Eco first, then tackled The Prague Cemetery.
Overall, not a bad read at all, and a story that you want to see through to its conclusion. It's just hard to get through at times, and that took away from the good parts of the book and the writing.