Our Man in Havana/ Umberto Eco

 Our man in Havana: pg. 110-end /The name of the Rose: 0-50

This post really encompasses two weeks of reading and I realize that I have not posted about a book in a while. In my absence of posting I have finished Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and have started Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. After finally finishing Our Man in Havana I have come to realize that it was not my favorite book. Maybe it was because the plot wasn't as riveting as I thought it might be, or perhaps the characters were not that interesting. However, I find this book to be extremely well crafted and the undertones and themes shine through fantastically. I love the way Wormold interacts with the characters and really develops meaningful relationships with his daughter, Milly and his senile, German friend, Dr. Hasselbacher. I love the way Greene uses POV to leave us with just enough information about the characters in order to craft our own opinions about them. This POV, being the third person limited that it is, really helps develop the novel as a whole. It gives the audience and chance to formulate their own idea about the characters and react to situations a certain way. I do not want to ruin the novel for anybody else who is trying to read it but all I can say is that if you pick up this book you will NOT be disappointed with it. Everything works perfectly with one another to create a truly suspenseful and captivating spy thriller. Its a pretty short read, one you can get done with in two weeks, so I highly recommend it.

OK! This is the second part of my post. This next book is called The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco. I have read The Prague Cemetery  by him this past December. I really like his style of writing because of lot of it is period pieces. His writing is really complex and very hard to get through sometimes. One of the things that I really like about his book is the prologue/introduction. This really gets you into the whole period of the writing and what sort of political and economic things were going on in that time. It is very well written and extremely informative. This story is about a Franciscan monk who becomes involved in a bizarre string of murder.  Brother William, one of the Franciscan monks has to become Italy's detective and solve this string of murders. A lot weighs upon his shoulders as he struggles between what is morally right and ethically right. This is one of the major themes in this book and one that, upon completing this book, I will look into. What can you do when you are confronted by two opposing codes, one of morals and one of ethics? Which path do you follow, but more interestingly which one will Brother William follow. I am really attracted to old style detective books like this, I have read a series of books by Michael Georgio, another Italian Author who wrote about a detective living in Prussia( While it was still called that). I love these kinds of novels and I am extremely excited to get into the meat of this book. Again, I would classify this book as a popular fiction combined with literary fiction because the emphasis is toward the plot and how it is resolved and the Franciscan monks choices and ultimately his character himself. The next post about this book will be in about a week, this novel is hard to get through so this book will take me a little while to complete. More to come, what will Brother William do next?! muaha! (Just kidding)