BOOK REVIEW: Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris (2006 Delacorte Press)

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     Allow me to begin this review by establishing that I am not new to the books of Thomas Harris.   I’ve read all but one of his four previous novels ‘Black Sunday’ (1975), ‘Red Dragon’ (1981), and ‘Hannibal’ (1999).   The only one to escape my attention was perhaps his most popular book. ‘Silence of the Lambs’ (1988), which was curiously unavailable from local libraries.   The fault for this lapse is my own, since I won’t buy what I can’t borrow.   I want to make sure I’ll read a book over and over again before I buy my own copy.   Books can be expensive, and I move around a fair amount so my library is small and very selective.

     I borrowed ‘Hannibal Rising’ to prepare myself for a “Script to Screen” style article in which the reviewer compares a book with its film adaptation.   Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to acquire Harris’s latest to the serial killer fiction well.   ‘Hannibal’ (1999) in my opinion was much too long, and was immobilized in its lush, evocative, sensual, Romantic setting like an insect petrified in amber.   The part where he popped the top of his victim’s skull and dined on his victim’s brains while the victim was present and alive was an excellent set piece, but all in all the book was long on style and short on action.

     In ‘Hannibal Rising’, Harris avoided the pitfalls of stylistic over-indulgence to the detriment of the forward movement of his characters and the narrative.

     The book begins in a gothic style, presenting the notorious origins of Lecter’s unique character.   The setting is distinctly Gothic, with castles and moats and tapestries, roaring fireplaces, winding staircases, and hidden rooms accessed by secret switches.

     The style of the novel changes, when we are quickly transported through the events between the World War II era in Eastern Europe to the post-war Paris of Lecter’s adolescence.

     Lecter’s uncle, and now his adopted father is a Parisian painter.   A real “stuffed shirt” type.   His wife is a Japanese woman, and the inclusion of her character and the integration of her cultural background’s stylistic influence seems to reflect the author’s interest in the rich tradition of Japanese romantic/historical novels, which have become well-known in certain circles of Western literature enthusiasts.

     In the ‘ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS’, the author acknowledges the influence of Murasaki Shikibu’s ‘The Tale of Genji’, which was also the favorite novel of eccentric American author and artist Edward Gorey, most well-known for creating the style for the animated beginning of the PBS program ‘Mystery!’, but best known to his fans as creator of ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’, a little storybook presenting an alphabetical index of the deaths of children accompanied by illustrations of their fates.   Harris also mentions that the character of the Japanese wife/mother had a father named Musashi, and this reviewer recognized this as a nod to Japanese author and philosopher Miyamoto Musashi, author of ‘The Book of Five Rings’.   The author includes a reproduction of Musashi’s “Shrike on a withered branch” as an illustration for the ‘Hannibal Rising’s “title page”.

     This influence and its inspiration having been established, Harris spends a little too much time for my taste exploring the relationship contrasting Eastern European Lecter with Japanese Lady Murasaki.   Interesting characters, but I didn’t open a Hannibal book to learn about the fine arts of haiku poetry and flower arrangement.

     The main story of the book is a common theme in literature and film.   A story of wrongdoing and revenge with too many stylistic predecessors to discuss in a review of this length.   But the book is also a book about World War II, and the German invasion of Russia, and the priceless works of art which were stolen from their rightful owners some of which embarked upon incredible journeys for inanimate objects without the innate desire to travel, and police procedural investigation and espionage, and forbidden love and human relationships, and murder in its many varieties, murder out of desperation and murder from revenge.    Before you balk at the length of the preceding sentence, allow me to assure you that it was done intentionally to give readers a sense of the miscellany of themes which Harris weaves into his latest novel.   Many authors and film-makers that attempt to incorporate such a diverse variety of themes in their work exhibit an awkwardness which leaves the resulting works unbalanced.   Not enough of any of the miscellany of themes to represent a unified artistic and thematic work.   Thomas Harris transcends this difficulty in his latest work, except perhaps for the overindulgence discussed in the preceding paragraph.

     The best part of this novel, aside from its synthesis of themes is the presentation of the main character Hannibal Lecter.   In Hannibal, Lecter is a cold-blooded murderer with a refined aesthetic sensibility.   Although the character is interesting, he is also boring in the way that many people that have over-refined aesthetic sensibilities often are.   In ‘Hannibal Rising’ Lecter is out for blood.   Lecter pursues his prey with the intensity of a bastard clone of Charles Bronson in Death Wish and Bruce Willis in Die Hard.   He is Hannibal Lecter: Action Hero and there are more explosions and gunplay than there is coldly calculated serial killer style executions.   This must have made the film readily adaptable for the Hollywood fantasy factory and I look forward to viewing the 2007 adaptation of this novel for review.

     On a brief side note there were some curious misspellings in the novel.   On page 88 of the hardcover, there is “longue” for “lounge”, but on further research this proves to be the correct French spelling, another example of American ignorance.   And on page 146 there is “trusty” for “trustee”, but it seems that the confusion is in usage, not spelling.