The Reading Group Reads...
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
OR POSSIBLY NOT! You see, we'd most of us already read The Name of the Rose
twenty or so years ago, and definitely remembered it was a very good book. The
only thing was, other than this, none of us could actually remember anything
else. Not to worry (we all thought) everyone-else will have read it, and then
everything will come flooding back...
But no! Memories remained irresolutely blank, and even those who'd read it really recently (as in the night before) weren't that certain, so in the end we watched the film instead, thoughtfully brought along for the occasion by Rob Hollingsworth, who anticipated well in this respect.
This didn't stick much to the book much either (could the director remember what happened?) but the general gist of things is that it's a Middle Ages Murder Mystery, set at a Dominican Abbey somewhere in the wilds of Italy, but where the famous magnificently-stocked library is strictly off-limits, because it has books in it ordinary people shouldn't be exposed to; books that think humour is a good thing. This turns out to be the key to everything in the end, although not before the library burns down, the scribe loses his virginity (this took some time in the film) and the visiting Inquisition has seen off a few monks and peasants in its usual fair and even-handed manner. Clearly philosophical in some respects, quite a bit of this philosophy was in (untranslated) Latin. A brief exchange in the film raised the comment "That was 20 pages in the book" only to be smartly contradicted "NO! 200 pages.. " Why did we all like it so much (see above)? Um.. .
We had an excellent Christmas Party with some brilliant Christmas fare, of which it has to be said that the most excellent Mexican Wedding Cakes specially manufactured for by Chris Carrington, played a starring role.
Why don't YOU come book-clubbing next year? See our programme opposite. 8pm Kent House, January 10: The Ponds of Kalambayi by Mike Tidwell.
The Second Review
AS ONE OF THOSE who read the book 20 years and actually liked it (Caroline
never did!) I remembered enough to think of something to say when suddenly
asked by the aforementioned Caroline at the start of the book club meeting to
start the discussion. It's a book that draws on many familiar themes:
medižval murder mystery, hidden knowledge (Dan Brown etc.), burning buildings
(remember Manderley), the Inquisition (though here everyone does expect them),
and perhaps less familiarly a treatise on heresy and sin generally.
It is probably on this last but least familiar and maybe least popular theme that it works best. The story contains a rich variety of sin: murder (of course); sexual (mainly by monks!); gluttony (monks again); and heresy. Of these, it is heresy which is treated as the most serious by the inquisitors and there is a strong implication that much of their dislike of the central character, William, is that he is friar and as such follows a simple and abstemious life which threatens their own very comfortable existence.
The film of course has a greater emphasis on the familiar and popular. Does it miss the point?