Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Everything Eco writes starts with an off-putting tour through a forest of symbols and a closet jammed with old conspiracies, until the average reader throws the damn thing at the wall. This is no different, although the racist rambler at the center of the opening scenes of this novel is appalling, like Don Rickles on medieval crack. This novel is a thriller in clown pants, a consipracy of dirty priests and nasty freemasons and horrible men and the smelly calvalcade of southern European bigotries. It is great fun, and surprisingly a rolicking good tail, but why, oh why has Mr. Eco never learnt to lead the reader into the labrynth of his genius? So, if you are in the mood for a good book that starts with a Master's degree level of litarary sophistication in one huge swallow, this is the book for you. If you are in a book that takes you through all of the many furtive nasty cracks in a bad man's mind, in order to make a point, this is the book for you... I cannot help but think that this must be literature, because it is too dense to be a dime novel. If he wears you out (and Mr. Eco does wear out a reader) within the first 25 pages, so be it. Having finished it, I have the same reaction to this as I did to reading Genet.... brilliant. Sick. Worth it. Never again.