Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him... Hannibal's uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with him and his beautiful, exotic wife. Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal, and under her care he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. But Hannibal's demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn. He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death's prodigy.
--back cover
I vaguely recall having watched the film version a few years back, but expected more nuance in the book given Harris's other work. The tough part about selling this is having some great plot building up to one of the most famous villains in modern literature, but not having the character overdone in comparison to his later (expectedly scarier) self. While not as engaging as I remember his other books, this was certainly interesting and entertaining. He does have some lovely turns of phrase that made me stop and reread several sections to appreciate not only his language, but the means of expression, and creativity.
I think Thomas Harris had two goals with this book. Firstly, to make some money from a popular anti-hero, and secondly to attempt to explain what turned a cultured sophisticate into a monster.
I'm sure he succeeded with the first goal.
From a technical viewpoint, this book seems a little rushed. There are several occasions where the narrative flips from past tense to present tense for no apparent reason. In a few passages this actually happens in the middle of a paragraph and once half way through a sentence. On a few of these occasions, it's been done as an attempt to show immediacy and increase the pace, but it's done so clumsily that it immediately removes you from the flow of the book. Personally, given the clumsy sentence structure at these points, I suspect it's bad editing.
The following is an example - make up your own mind:
"Hannibal …
I think Thomas Harris had two goals with this book. Firstly, to make some money from a popular anti-hero, and secondly to attempt to explain what turned a cultured sophisticate into a monster.
I'm sure he succeeded with the first goal.
From a technical viewpoint, this book seems a little rushed. There are several occasions where the narrative flips from past tense to present tense for no apparent reason. In a few passages this actually happens in the middle of a paragraph and once half way through a sentence. On a few of these occasions, it's been done as an attempt to show immediacy and increase the pace, but it's done so clumsily that it immediately removes you from the flow of the book. Personally, given the clumsy sentence structure at these points, I suspect it's bad editing.
The following is an example - make up your own mind:
"Hannibal leaned over the railing. At a range of two feet he shot Gassmann in the top of the head, up on the railing now and jumping, landing on Gassman and rolling to the deck. The captain felt the thud of Gassmann falling, and looked first to the stern line, saw they were clear."
The clumsy, rushed, sentence structure makes the novel difficult reading. A trivial example:
"Popil nodded to the guard and he pulled the bolt to admit him."
Who pulled the bolt? Popil pulled it to admit the guard? Or vice versa? Ok, so I'm probably being a bit picky here, but when I'm reading a fast-paced thriller, I don't want to be continually pulled out of the action by confusing prose.
In at least one occasion there's a blatant change of context from one person's viewpoint to another within the same paragraph - this one certainly looks like bad editing.
Regardless of all my moaning above, does the novel manage to demonstrate Harris' second goal? No, it doesn't. It tells the story of a young lad who witnesses something awful happening in his childhood. This apparently results in him eating people. I don't understand why.
