Many years ago, a college professor of mine gave me a reading list of personal favorites that she wanted me to try. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco was on the list, but from everything I’d heard about the 1980 novel, it didn’t sound like something I’d be interested in. However, since I recently came across the audiobook version on cassette tapes(!) at my local library, I decided to finally give it a try. Unfortunately, the novel turned out to be everything I’d feared it would be: long-winded, full of obscure references, and boring.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Name of the Rose is narrated by a Benedictine monk named Adso of Melk. Now an old man, Adso tells the story as a memoir or a flashback to the year 1327 when he was just a novice traveling with William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar. The two are headed to a secluded monastery in the mountains of Italy where there is set to be an important debate on the most pressing religious topics of the day.
Once they arrive, however, Abo of Fossanova, the abbot of the monastery has some terrible news: one of the monks was found dead that morning, and he would like William to investigate the case to see whether or not foul play was involved. Abo asks William to take over because he wants an objective outsider to handle the inquiries, and also because he has heard of William’s great skill in observation, logic, and reasoning. William readily agrees, so he and Adso soon begin their investigation.
But the two visitors run into obstacle after obstacle, as none of the monks seem all too willing to help them. Even Abo places roadblocks in their way by forbidding them access to the labyrinthine library, a place that William is sure is critical to unraveling the mystery. After several more bodies are found on the monastery grounds, the case becomes even more urgent, but Abo is as unrelenting as ever about granting access to the library.
Nevertheless, by bits and degrees, William and Adso get the information they need in order to uncover the killer’s identity. The fact that they do so through accident, guesses, and sheer luck delivers a blow to William’s ego; but of course the end result is the same.
My Reaction: First of all, let me state right off the bat that I know I don’t fit into the audience Eco had in mind when he penned this tome. According to the extensive author’s note at the end of The Name of the Rose, Eco never thought that “unsophisticated” readers would ever be interested in a novel about 14th-century monks. He apparently is a learned scholar of that period, so it seemed natural to him to set his story in that time, but he clearly didn’t intend for this book to be a work of popular fiction.
That probably explains why there are so many long, tedious discussions about philosophy, logic, and religion throughout the novel. These passages might be interesting to people familiar with the late Middle Ages, but they only served to put me to sleep. If I hadn’t been listening to this book on tape, I can almost guarantee that I wouldn’t have finished it. The only way I was able to get through it was by tuning out as the narrator droned on through this stuff.
I’ve read other reader reviews of this novel, and one frequent complaint was that there were so many long, untranslated Latin lines and paragraphs in the text. I wholeheartedly agree with this. Even though I studied Latin for six years, I mostly had no clue what these passages were about, so I don’t know if they were relevant to the story or not. Either way, this just gave me another reason to periodically tune out from the book.
The mystery itself was pretty interesting, as was the library. If Eco had concentrated only on those things while leaving out all the other stuff, this would have been a book I could like. Then again, I guess that just goes to show that I’m not the sophisticated reader that he had in mind while writing. Indeed, I read some reviews from people who are experts in the period, and they thought the novel was wonderfully entertaining with lots of inside jokes poking fun at various historical figures.
Overall, The Name of the Rose simply wasn’t my kind of book. Those who are more learned than I might enjoy it, but I sure couldn’t. If you’re an average person like me, you’ll probably want to give this one a pass.