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Title: Baudolino by Umberto Eco, William Weaver ISBN: 0151006903 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.98
Rating: 4
Summary: picaresque, Gulliverian travel
Comment: Historical fiction is where Umberto Eco found narrative success in The Name of the Rose, and it's where he finds success in Baudolino. The Europe of centuries past provides Eco with room for both flights of fancy and detail-rich history buff trivia. This book divides nearly in half along those lines: the first half is straight -- albeit fanciful and amusing -- historical fiction, told by a narrator with a talent for embellishment. But the second half of the book drops the reader into pure fantasy-land as the character Baudolino and his archetypal ragtag group of adventurers go on a quest to the edges of the medieval maps -- into the region of the margins, where fantastical creatures and perils limited only by imagination await the traveler. There are nods to Gulliver here, and all the utterly invented history of travelers eager to entertain and impress the folks back home with their feats of daring, turning the exotic into the ever more exotic. Of course, Professor Eco's observations on human nature, politics, and philosophy shape his story as much as his desire to entertain. In the last chapters of the book, philosophy threatens to overwhelm narrative, and there are moments of new-age corn that challenge all but the most sympathetic reader. Of course, long, nerdy descriptions of European micro-politics occasionally swamp narrative too, as they did in Foucault's Pendulum. But the book's sheer joy in telling its fabulous yarn makes those missteps moot.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Travelogue Through the Middle Ages
Comment: I adored Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE and FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM - and hated THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE. Umberto Eco's newest novel, BAUDOLINO, lies somewhere in between. In it, Eco returns to familiar territory: the Middle Ages and the theological philosophies that shaped the times. He begins his story during the Fourth Crusade when Constantinople is under attack. A Greek priest Niketas is rescued by a mysterious man named Baudolino who amazingly knows the languages of both attackers and defenders. While the two are in hiding, Baudolino tells Niketas his life story, from his peasant beginnings to his adoption by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick to his quest to discover the kingdom of the legendary priest Prestor John. Baudolino is a self-professed liar, so his story unfolds with the authority of his voice but also with underlying uncertainty. Baudolino believes with passion many of his own lies, lending yet another layer to his tale.
Parts of this novel are brilliant, but Eco does not seem to know what he wants this novel to be. For example, he spends a portion of the book documenting the rise of the Italian city-states, finally focusing on one city and its inhabitants with convincing detail and conflict, only to discard it - just when the situation gets interesting - in favor of a lackluster quest to return the Holy Grail to Prestor John's kingdom. The books covers events that occurred throughout Europe, and somehow (is it his liar's tongue?) Baudolino is always there with his hand stirring up history. Eco devotes huge sections to war, mythological beings, and long treatises on the theological questions of the times. He seems to want to cram everything he knows about the Middle Ages into this novel: myths, misconceptions, historical figures, theological debates, politics. Unfortunately, by not building his story around one or two of these elements, he has ended up with a scattered novel that can be compelling one minute and excruciatingly dull the next. The motivations of the characters are often weak, although sometimes the characters spring up with unexpected vividness, only to fade away once again. I wish Eco had spent more time with the human moments of the Middle Ages to give this era life.
Despite the unmoored aspect to BAUDOLINO, Eco is at his humorous best when inventing, with details that made me laugh, the origin of several Middle Ages "discoveries": the shroud of Turin, the widely circulated letters of Prestor John, the conflicting relics that appeared in various early churches, to name only a few. Several real figures of the times - Zosimos the alchemist, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick and his son, and Niketas himself - have human foibles that make them rise off the page. Baudolino's relationship with both his real and his adoptive fathers are poignant in two separate scenes, and his love for his stepmother is convincingly told.
This is a sinuously told tale with no constant conflict or other driving force, but one which will please readers who love philosophy, intellectual history, and theological debates. I recommend this for patient readers who have a bonafide interest in Eco's work as well as in medieval times. You will be wholly dissatisfied if you are looking for the mystery or conspiracy of Eco's previously successful novels.
Rating: 4
Summary: Earthy and erudite
Comment: Humorous and obscure, earthy and erudite, Eco's tale of a 12th century Italian peasant whose rise through the court of the Prussian Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, gives him a hand in most of the significant history of the time, delivers the intricate arguments, raucous personalities and mindbending paradoxes readers have come to expect.
The story opens during the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Having saved the historian Niketas, Baudolino proceeds to tell him his story; a grand epic which stars Baudolino as poet, statesman, reluctant soldier, spy, lover, holy man, philosopher, and pilgrim to the mythical realm of Prester John. It encompasses the Crusades, the search for the holy grail, the mysteries of the East, the circular wrangling between pope and potentate, the petty, fluid and bloody rivalries of Italian cities and the state of science at the time.
But there's one caveat. The young Baudolino originally caught his patron's eye because of his two greatest talents - languages and lies. So what to believe?
The choice is yours and the journey is stimulating, although the drug-enhanced Paris student arguments on the great questions of the day begin to read like student arguments of any era, despite the wit. Baudolino is engaging, but as an untrustworthy narrator he maintains a certain distance from the reader. Eco's fans, dictionary in hand, will enjoy the play, but those who got bogged down in "The Name of the Rose" should skip this one.
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Title: The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears ISBN: 157322202X Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0151008116 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber ISBN: 015100692X Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 16 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco ISBN: 0156001314 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, William Weaver ISBN: 0345368754 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 1990 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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