A review by readingthruthepages
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

4.0

A somewhat long winded but funky story that felt rather like a mashup of Sherlock Holmes, The Monk, and Moby Dick. Much of the style was highly reminiscent of The Swiss Family Robinson in the detailing and expostulatory narration. While I found it hard to get into the story, once I accustomed myself to the writing, I was hooked. By turns spooky, dry, hilarious, and sincere, this is a roller coaster of a novel.

Adso is a young novice who arrives at the abby with his master, William of Baskerville. They are just in time to investigate the first of a string of deaths that seem to be linked to the coming of the Antichrist and the apocalypse, all pointing to some mystery of the greatest library in Christendom: That of the Aedificium at the Abbey, to be entered only by the librarian.

As the death count mounts, one thing does become clear. Everything in life, and in death, is a matter of perspective. "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do." "How can we trust ancient wisdom, whose traces you are always seeking, if it is handed down by lying books that have interpreted it with such license? Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means."

We are warned against the danger of seeing or interpreting certainty from the uncertain, concreteness from the insubstantial, material from the spiritual. A warning that, when not heeded, leads to disastrous consequences.