Hannibal
by Thomas Harris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas HarrisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-19
ISBN: 0385339488
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Delta
Book Reviews of Hannibal
Book Review: What in the world just happened?
Summary: 2 Stars
This book is quite possibly what would be considered a disaster. There was never a single moment where I was enthralled enough to keep turning the pages. Of course, that's unfortunate, because it's set in a world where a monster like Hannibal Lecter runs free. The very earth should be shivering beneath his footfalls and it doesn't. Each page should be something of a continued suspension and I had no problems putting the book down to turn to something more important.
I've always enjoyed the simplicity of style that Thomas Harris uses in his books. He never quite tells you exactly what goes on in his story and it leaves the reader groping for more and inclining their own minds to finish reduced scenes. This time, however, it was just irritating. I think if Dr. Lecter was a real man he would have been upset that his story was told in so much reduced form, as if nothing holds any meaning.
The characters, which held up the story meekly, were as lame as a broken leg. Like many of Harris' novels surrounding Dr. Lecter, we find two villains. The more sinister, genius, cannibal and the mysterious criminals that are somehow connected to him in some way, as if his poisonous abilities have slipped out in the world to continue his dirty work in a rather poor fashion. Mason Verger is our second criminal. Half mad, half eaten, half dead. He is far from sinister. Though he has no obligations to the world and is under a delusional, religious, cleansing frenzy he is as weak as the respirator that gives him breath. Margot, his body building sister, is more malevolent and she turns out to be more brutal but she hardly gets enough page time, except for cracking nuts in her hand, to really get fearful of.
Speaking of the Verger clan, Barney gets mixed up with them at one point and his entire stay in this book might as well have been the bumbling fool, in a scholar's clothing, who is just taking up space. He's obsessed with Dr. Lecter and yet he helps to bring him to a connived sense of justice in Mason's mind. Then he floats out of the book again only to appear later under the gun barrel of Ardelia, who is as useless as Crawford (simply acting as a removed security blanket for Starling), and then later when the novel ends.
Getting to more substantial characters. Clarice Starling is 32 going on 33 years of age and she is much smarter, more efficient, but the same delicate little flower that she hides so well. She has also not climbed the ladder of judiciary action since we last saw her. Her humiliation attracts Dr. Lecter and in more ways than one. The novel's end is the most ridiculous thing I've probably ever read. It was as if, during the last forty pages, Harris had no idea how to conclude their little communication together so he gave into the carnal desires of lust and devotion and obsession. Clarice has never struck me as a woman who would annex her mind so easily, even if the mind is capable of creating an almost entirely new schema over a previous one. I feel I have already given too much away, if you're ever interested in reading this thing...though I suggest you do not.
The one thing I liked about the continued character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter is that we start to get his own background. Now that he is a free agent we get into his brain much more often and though it is a beautifully wicked place to be in it is also full of reasons, just like anyone would have, for the way he is. We even see him weak, screaming laments for his past. It sets up the next book, Hannibal Rising, rather nicely with the presentation of his sister Mischa. Though he is our typically creepy Dr. Lecter he suddenly has this sensitive side at the end that makes me, once again, question Harris' reasoning for giving into carnality instead of a more practiced, thought out approach.
All in all the book is hardly worth reading unless, unfortunately, you would like to continue to the next book or at least complete your own developed concepts of the Lecter saga.
Summary of Hannibal
You remember Hannibal Lecter: gentleman, genius, cannibal. Seven years have passed since Dr. Lecter escaped from custody. And for seven years he's been at large, free to savor the scents, the essences, of an unguarded world.But intruders have entered Dr. Lecter's world, piercing his new identity, sensing the evil that surrounds him. For the multimillionaire Hannibal left maimed, for a corrupt Italian policeman, and for FBI agent Clarice Starling, who once stood before Lecter and who has never been the same, the final hunt for Hannibal Lecter has begun. All of them, in their separate ways, want to find Dr. Lecter. And all three will get their wish. But only one will live long enough to savor the reward....
From the Paperback edition.
Horror lit's head chef Harris serves up another course in his Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter trilogy, and it's a pièce de résistance for those with strong stomachs. In the first book, Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), Hannibal diabolically helps the FBI track a fascinating serial killer. (Takes one to know one.) In The Silence of the Lambs, he advises fledgling FBI manhunter Clarice Starling, then makes a bloody, brilliant escape.
Years later, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno.
Pazzi is on the take from a character as scary as Hannibal: Mason Verger. When Verger was a young man busted for raping children, his vast wealth saved him from jail. All he needed was psychotherapy--with Dr. Lecter. Thanks to the treatment, Verger is now on a respirator, paralyzed except for one crablike hand, watching his enormous, brutal moray eel swim figure eights and devour fish. His obsession is to feed Lecter to some other brutal pets.
What happens when the Italian cop gets alone with Hannibal? How does Clarice's reunion with Lecter go from macabre to worse? Suffice it to say that the plot is Harris's weirdest, but it still has his signature mastery of realistic detail. There are flaws: Hannibal's madness gets a motive, which is creepy but lessens his mystery. If you want an exact duplicate of The Silence of the Lambs's Clarice/Hannibal duel, you'll miss what's cool about this book--that Hannibal is actually upstaged at points by other monsters. And if you think it's all unprecedentedly horrible, you're right. But note that the horrors are described with exquisite taste. Harris's secret recipe for success is restraint. --Tim Appelo
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