The Name of the Rose - by Umberto Eco - Book Review

This 1980s classic is among the bestselling books of all times, having sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. I, however, came to know of it only this month, when a friend mentioned it in a casual WhatsApp chat.  

But for her serendipitous remark, I would have remained nescient to the terrible story of Adso of Melk, a Benedictine novice monk, and his mentor William of Baskerville, a Franciscan Friar, who also happens to be a semiotician (an expert in signs and symbols), their direful travel together in the winter of the year 1327 to a remote, medieval abbey somewhere in Northern Italy, to attend a theosophical disputation between factions of the Christian church, where, upon reaching, William is asked by the abbot, to investigate the mysterious death of a monk the previous day, who as it turns out is only the first of the series of victims who will die before the week is up. 

So, at the first and most explicit level, it is a whodunnit murder mystery novel, where Brother William plays the detective, and he is expected to use his acclaimed, astute observational and syllogistic skills, to find the murderer, his character redolent of Sherlock Holmes - note the deliberate choice of 'Baskerville' in his name, shadowed by Adso, as does Watson to Holmes. The confines of a secluded abbey, characters who have secrets to keep and pasts to hide, illicit love and jealousies, a library which no one is allowed to enter, a labyrinth which is indecipherable, secret entrances to vaults with inestimable riches, deaths which seem to follow a preordained sequence set in the 'John's book of revelations'- are all ingredients which fill the cornucopia from which this nice, juicy, mystery story may be partaken.  

However the author, Umberto Eco, uses the above theme of the story only to keep the reader's interest riveted, and to bind together the next level of his narrative, which centres around theosophical and religious matters. Several chapters are devoted to ecclesiastical discussions between the characters on whether Jesus laughed or not, on the impending arrival of Antichrist, on the 'poverty of Christ' and on what constitutes 'heresy' - topics which were hotly contested in the late medieval era, the heat of such contestations being enough for deep schisms and fragmentation of the Church, distancing the papal clergy (who owned large estates property and riches) from sects like Franciscans, Fraticelli and Dulcinians who believed in renouncing personal possessions and living in poverty, leading to declarations of the 'heresy' against the latter groups, with the heretics convicted at motivated inquisitions being tortured or burnt at the stake. Yeah, this stuff got real, man.  

But at the highest level the book's narrative is really about the varying approaches to 'truth'- in particular the truth defining the infallibility of 'God's word in the scriptures'. It's about 'reasoned doubt' vs 'dogma'.  It's about 'discovering the new vs protecting the ancient'.  It’s about Aristotle vs Aquinas.

Near the end of the book, when it's time for William to ruefully look back at the events in the story, he says to Adso: 

"Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."

and then goes on to add

"Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”

For us, living in the current century, having been brought up on thoughts based on post-enlightenment science, these appear to be debates of the medieval area which have long been 'settled'. Yet in various forms, shapes, and intensities these issues keep recurring in our societies. So despite the author's own assertion in the preface that "...it is a tale of books, not of everyday worries...", I feel there is a relevance of the story even today.  

This review cannot be complete if I don't mention the narrative style of the book. The metanarrative style used in the book, admits to doubts about the veracity of the events which are described. In the preamble itself, the author explains to the readers that the story he is about to describe, comes from the transcriptions he made while reading the French version of a published memoirs of Adso (which he unfortunately irretrievably loses), but later in further research and discussions with scholars, he is told that no such book was ever published. Thinking that it might have been a forgery, he drops the idea of writing the book, till couple of years later, he finds the same story repeated in a totally unconnected manuscript in South America. Though still beset with doubts, he decides to recount the story as 'The Name of the Rose'. Why does the author describe all this to the reader? There does not seem to be any need to do so. No reason, unless right from the outset he wants to orient the reader's mind on the tension which exists between 'doubt' and 'truth', which the story gravitates towards.

Let truth be told. It's not quite the bedtime story one would like to curl up with on a rainy night. The writing style is very pedantic and the language is verbose at times. But to be fair to the author, he gives early warning signals about what to expect. Not too many pages down from the beginning of the book, when Adso reaches the abbey and enters the church for the first time, and he sees a carved tympanum above the doorway, the author doesn't allow him to go through till he has used him to give the reader a 2152 word description (I counted) of the carving.  If the reader passes this test of patience (and hopefully finds it fascinating) he is primed to digest the lengthy discourses on Christianity and enjoy Adso's description of his bizarre dream which lasts for a full chapter. The sentences are long and concatenated by an endless series of commas, with frequent use of words which lie outside the limits of my vocabulary (a style which I have tried to playfully imitate in this review).

If you are still not one of the 50 million people who have read the book, put it down in your don’t-die-before-reading-it-list.

My rating : 4 Stars.