SFG75 said:
I was very impressed with the intelligent way it was written, kind of a thinking person's Sherlock Holmes writer old Umberto is.
This novel, I suppose, is a thinking man's Sherlock Holmes and there is much reference to other texts throughout.
The Hound of the Baskervilles being an obvious one to continue the Holmes analogy. The other big reference, if not part of the overall inspiration, is the works of Jorge Luis Borges. His literary obsession with labyrinths, mirrors and libraries - the more impossible the better - is pivotal to the book, as is the man himself when he appears thinly disguised as Jorges of Burgos, a blind man with a Spanish tongue to whom the aforementioned obsessions are intertwined.
But to call the author a writer of thinkers' Sherlock Holmes would be a mistake.
The Name Of The Rose is a murder mystery, plain and not-so-simple. His other novels are a variety of complicated beasts.
Foucault's Pendulum, my favourite of Eco, is set in 1970s Milan and sets out to create one huge conspiracty theory involving a phenomenal cast of secret societies, religious bodies, politicians, and more and then debunks it all with one fell swoop. For those that think Dan Brown is the king of conspiracy novels, this book makes him look like a peasant.
The Island Of The Day Before, is a strange one. Set in the 17th Century on board a ship,
Daphne, and our protagonist is stranded upon it. Nearby, there's an island but on the island it is always yesterday. The novel consists of many flashbacks to earlier times in the character's life and concerns itself more with nature than the religious stuff in the previous two novels. It seems to be the least favourite novel for Eco readers.
The nearest to
The Name Of The Rose, in setting and content, would be
Baudolino, but this novel is far more fantastic in content as it deals with the kingdom of Prester John and an expedition to find it. Real historical events blend effortlessly with fleshed out characters who have appeared in the writings of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo as they explored new lands, describing such impossible people as blemmyae, satyrs, cynocephali, panyote, and more. The novel follows the story of
Baudolino, a liar. It's told in the third person so you don't quite get the sense of an unreliable narrator. Or do you? And, while not quite the medieval detective story that
The Name of the Rose was,
Baudolino features a remarkable locked room mystery in which no less than five possible - and plausible - explanations are invented and scrapped.
