Review: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

I just finished reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco last night, and I thought I'd write down a few thoughts for anyone else interested in reading the book. I read the novel for pure enjoyment, mostly at night before bed, and pure enjoyment it was. The story takes place over seven days in 1327, in an abbey. On its surface, the book is a mystery novel. William of Baskerville and his novice, Adso of Melk, are summoned to the abbey to solve a murder. William's keen observations and calculated logic direct him into the heart of the abbey, its labyrinthine library, and the secrets contained therein.

The tale is told through Adso's narrative voice, from whom the reader is cleverly distanced by an additional frame of narration indicated in the prologue. Much like Robert Walton in Shelley's Frankenstein, an unknown speaker introduces Adso's account, telling about his translating into Italian what was in fact a copy of Adso's original manuscript, written in 1842 by Abbe Vallet in Paris. This narrative framing alerts the reader to the novel's second level of meaning: it is a book about books. More specifically, it is a book about time's fading effect and the small triumph against it that books represent. This truth is best encapsulated in the novel's final lyric statement, a haunting line, written in latin, for which the entire book is prerequisite:

"stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus."
The ancient rose is pristine by its name; naked names are all we have.