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Felipe (17 KP) rated The Name of the Rose in Books

Dec 3, 2020

The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco | 2008 | Fiction & Poetry

8.4

(5 Ratings)

Book Rating

A labyrinth of mystery with multiple dimensions, pitfalls, dead ends and revelations. (2 more)

The story and structure are brilliant.

The characters are genius and the narrative is written in way that you get sucked into and are part of the narrative.

Brilliant and entertaining introduction to semiotics.

I first read this book in my freshman or sophomore year in college after having seen the Sean Connery film adaptation. Like most novels that movies are based on, the book was far better than the movie. The movie was just a superficial touching on the themes of the book but the book was a multi dimensional journey through art, philosophy, literature and theology while captivating the reader in a very good murder mystery. The tragedy of the book is the revelation to the reader that our tendency to try to form connections between random events as and ideas is futile. The library is an allegory to the house of cards that comes crashing down when we create false narratives on tenuous connections between randomn events and ideas; connections that don't really exist.

Eco takes all of his academic experience that he has absorbed in the years and uses fiction to not only tell a good story but also to challenge us on how we see the world and interpret the signs and symbols we come into contact.