Good start and middle.... (Hannibal - Thomas Harris)

Member Name: josollsam

Product:	Hannibal - Thomas Harris
Date:	19/05/01 (32 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully written

Disadvantages: Terrible ending

Having read 'silence of the lambs' I was very much looking forward to reading 'Hannibal'. I wanted to know more about him as a free man.

I find Hannibal, although a murderer and a cannibal, someone who was charming, likeable, and fascinating. Which is a srange way to feel about someone so 'evil'.

Clarise Starling, heroine of 'silence of the lambs' is also a character who I would like to remain 'friends' with, she is also fascinating, but for different reasons. She is honest, determined, stubborn and a bit vulnerable.

We also have Mason and his sister Margot, Mason being the real evil one here and we can't feel sympathy towards him at all, even though he is suffering. I am glad he is suffering. Margot, well, she is a bit of a non-entity but she's alright!

There are a few more characters who we either like or don't and on the whole I am satisfied with how they all either move on or get caught out.

Except for Hannibal and Clarise. The book ending is so far-fetched, so surreal and so fairy tale-like that it is incredibly disappointing.

Thomas Harris has a great way of putting words together in sentences that are like eating some of the (food) delicacies hannibal enjoys. Harris makes you savour each phrase, sometimes it is necessary to reread a paragraph just because it is pleasurable to do so. You are pulled along, aching to find out what happens to each person and then........well, nothing.

Worth a read though, just for the poetic way Harris writes, but be prepared to wonder what happened to make Harris appear to suddenly either not be able to find a proper ending, or whether he just went on a flight of fancy, forgetting what he had written beforehand.

Summary: