Eco had originally wanted to call it “ Adso of Melk” after William’s novice assistant and the narrating voice of the story, but he tells us in Italy books are rarely named after a person. The book weighs in at over 500 pages and there is a lengthy postscript where the author talks about the book. Umberto Eco knows his stuff he was a professor of medieval studies at Bologna University but some of the detail is a little too much. Aside from the murder mystery there is a lot of information about papal decrees, obscure Fourteenth Century religious controversies and the conflict between the Pope in Avignon and the Emperor in Rome. The monk’s name is an homage to Sherlock Holmes, and his methods are similar. There is a murder mystery William of Baskerville, a Franciscan monk from Britain arrives at an abbey in early 14th century Italy, where a strange death has occurred, as he begins his investigation more deaths add to the toll. This took me longer to get through than I had expected. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says, but what it means… Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
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