I'm baaaaccckkk! One of the things I told myself when I started on the second year of the challenge was that I was going to try to do a better job of keeping up with the one-book/one-week pace. Obviously it hasn't worked out that way. In fact, it looks like it might be almost impossible to get to 52 books at this point. However, I'm going to see how many I can get done between now and the end of the year. I've got several books that I've read but haven't written up (I think I read this one in the spring), so I'll be playing catch-up on the blog entries for the next few days. I can't guarantee the quality of the write-ups, but I will guarantee that for any book I post, I have actually read the whole book during the challenge period.
Book 07 – The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose is a murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the first half of the 14th century. It is a time of great turmoil in the Catholic Church. There is a power struggle between the Pope, now residing in Avignon, and the Holy Roman Emperor in Rome. Great schisms have emerged between monastic orders, one of the greatest being the adoption of the idea that Christ had no possessions, which is in stark contrast to the vast materialism of the established church. Adopters of these new ideas run the risk of being accused of heresy.
William of Baskerville has been sent to the monastery to meet with Papal representatives regarding the terms by which Michael of Cesena will agree to obey the Pope’s summons that he appear in Avignon. As a proponent of these new "heretical" ideas, it is likely that Cesena will be imprisoned as soon as he arrives at the Pope's palace, so these talks will prove to be quite delicate, and any trouble could greatly alter the dynamic of the negotiation. Upon his arrival, William learns of the mysterious death of one of the monks. The death appears initially to be suicide (a sin in the Catholic Church), but it soon becomes clear it is murder. William, a former inquisitor with keen powers of observation and deduction, is asked to investigate. William’s investigation points to the monastery’s library, a vast labyrinth that is off-limits to all but a few. Despite strict instructions from the Abbot to stay clear of the library, William finds his way inside, and perhaps more important, makes it back out.
There is a race to solve the mystery before the Papal delegation can arrive, as they will likely attempt to use the crimes as leverage in the talks. Unfortunately, not only is William unsuccessful in solving the crime, but additional bodies turn up. When the delegation arrives, a rival inquisitor, Bernard Gui, launches his own investigation. Gui is quick to incorrectly attribute the crimes to the work of an heretic, and equally quick to make a spectacle of the accusation. However, William is unconvinced that they have the right culprit, and he continues to try to learn the truth about who really killed the monks, and to learn the secrets of the library.
Eco's book is told through the eyes of William's young apprentice, Adso. In addition to the mystery at hand, the book deeply explores the competing theologies of various orders within the Church at the time. It also examines the stranglehold the Church had on the dissemination of the written word, and how this hold was gradually slipping away as secular universities began to emerge. The book gets bogged down in arcane theology from time-to-time, but the mystery is a good one, and William's character is quite entertaining. It's worth the read.
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