Customer Reviews

The Pope's Rhinoceros: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I started reading Lawrence Norfolk's second Novel on a flight from London to Houston in early April 2004. I finished it on July 18. The last book that took me as long to read was Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses". Both books are fascinating, but at times immensely tedious. I intend to read both again after I retire!
I found the style of the book descriptive in the extreme. This worked in some instances, like the description of the rainforest somewhere in Goa?/Africa?, but often was at the expense of good story telling and a cohesive narative. The reader is very likely to lose sense of times, places, events and characters as some of the naration is actually a parade of memories taking place inside some character's mind. As a result, the reader might read a whole chapter without having any sense of time, place, event, etc.
As has been said by others, the ending was rushed and was in no way in proportion to the less improtant but extremely verbose descriptions given elsewhere.
Some of the likeable characters were treated unsympathetically. For example, can someone tell me what happened to Bernardo whose fortunes we followed in detail most of the way, but who suddenly disappeared without any fuss.

Lawrence Norfolk is one of the only modern masters of language and storytelling we have, and I believe that we should not only appreciate it but praise it as well. As with his first novel "Lepmpriere's Dictionary", which was a story of strange twisting plots and a great reservoir for historical mystery, "The Pope's Rhinoceros" is only the best book to follow. It of course has its strange tangents that we, as an audience, are learning to be the style of the great author, and minor plots that boggle the mind even after the last page has been read. There are things too reminiscent of Lempriere's such as the character of Septimus whom we are so intrigued by but so uninformed about, we get a new view on this angelic character and only find that we are closer to understanding without even a new hint as to what it means. His, Norfolk's, ability to write so detailed on certain things as the way of life of a fish in the sea, a colony of rats, or the history of a river or strange occurrences on remote islands, is impeccable. To achieve through writing alone, an enchantment that will devour your reader, without even the elements of a story is not an easy task and yet Norfolk produces it in the blink of an eye, and makes it appear all too natural. I think anyone would terribly enjoy this book, and those who would not are just those who become aggrivated when a piece of work forces them to think a little. The only negative of the book that I can even fathom is that he has so few books under his belt that when you finish Lempriere's and the Pope's who will be left waiting impatienly, clawing at and climbing the walls, for his next work to be published.

I'm a sucker for the time period in which this book is set (the so-called age of enlightenment). And the author captures it perfectly, from many many points of view. You get pieces of the story as perceived by fish in the sea, insects in a forest, the rats of Rome, and of course the fascinating people populating this epic tale. The problem is that I am very often disappointed by endings, and this book was no exception. When all is said and done...and suffice it to say that a lot IS said and done during the course of this novel, the entire scope of the story just doesn't amount to much. Its real strength is in the telling of the story. Great vignettes, language, imagery, and a magical mix of fantasy, reality and sorcery.

"The Pope's Rhinoceros" has been called Lawrence Norfolk's second novel. I don't believe its value comes mainly from its novel-hood. Rather, it has some amazing, even mind-blowing scenes tied together by recurring characters, some of which are intriguing or amusing, some less so.

The storyline is not easy to summarize (the book is like a very rich cake that cannot hold it shape). The time is the high Renaissance (early XVI century). Niklot, our hero, an aboriginal native of the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea, barely survives lynching by crazed locals because of his heathenish rituals. Having escaped an attempt to drown him (his mother was not so lucky) he wanders through the Central German forests for several years, living as a wild-child. He is captured by a wandering band of fraudsters who make a living by pretending to be retreating soldiers. Eventually the villagers of a town they intended to swindle turn on them, and turn them over to a real army, the Spanish one. Niklot, now named Salvestro, is befriended by a dim-witted giant (Bernardo) and by an older soldier, Groot. All take part in the attempted siege of the town of Prato, conducted by the Spaniards on behalf of the head of the Medici family, the youthful Cardinal Giovanni de Medicis, son of Lorenzo de Magnificent. For some unnamed reason (as is common throughout the book) the Cardinal pretends to accept Prato's surrender through an agreement with the city's bigwig, Aldo Tebaldi, but in reality allows the city to be plundered by the Spanish troops, and everything ends in an orgy of raping and murder that eventually extends to Tebaldi's family, who were being guarded by Salvestro, Bernardo and Groot (headed by a Spaniard named Colonel Diego). The Cardinal attempts to blame Salvestro et alii for the Tebaldi family massacre, but our hero and Bernardo manage to escape led by one of the more appealing characters in the book, a young proto-witch named Amalia. Colonel Diego and Groot are blamed for the escape of the supposed "murderers", and are dishonored. Salvestro leads Bernardo back to Usedom in an attempt to recoup their fortune by fishing out a treasure that was supposedly buried at the bottom of the sea when the heathen city of Vineta (located on a small peninsula off the coast of Usedom) sank during Henry the Lion's attempted siege over two hundred years before. The attempt fails miserably, and the villagers again try to kill Salvestro, whom they recognize as Niklot. Both Salvestro and Bernardo are saved by an order of monks, whose monastery is collapsing into the sea. Brother Joerg convinces Salvestro to lead them to Rome, where they will obtain some unnamed type of help in the rebuilding of their monastery (money? architects? who knows?). Salvestro obliges but Rome does not welcome the monks or their guides. The former Cardinal de Medicis, now crowned as Pope Leo X is not interested in anything as pedestrian as monks and monasteries, but is only concerned with obtaining a rhinoceros, which he hopes will fight with elephant Hanno, donated to him by the Portuguese King Manoel. So the Usedom monks scatter, some becoming builders, some vagrants, and father Joerg is eventually left almost alone as he tries to obtain an audience with the Pope for months and months. Meanwhile, Salvestro and Bernardo (along with their former enemy, colonel Diego) are forced to sign up on a doomed voyage to Africa (guided by an African princess whom they found living as a slave to a high-class prostitute in Rome) to fetch a rhino for His Holiness. The voyage and adventures in Africa (not perhaps the best rendered part of the book)are partially successful, in that they manage to bring the beast back, but dead due to a shipwreck off the coast of La Spezia. The Pope, grateful even for a dead Rhino, confers to Salvestro any wish he might choose to express. He expresses a wish to hear the Pope's confession, which refers to His Holiness's shameful actions during the Prato campaign. Then Salvestro, brother Joerg and another monk returh to Usedom, where Salvestro is finally murdered by the locals.

The book, as has been hinted is very uneven. Many scenes are memorable for a sort of nightmarish quality and exageration that is sometimes worthy of Rabelais: a feast in a Roman Church during which several live animals are torn apart and devoured by the parishioners, a poetical competition on a flooded stadium (naumachia), a hunting party led by Pope Leo, the crass jokes of Cardinals Bibbiena and Dovizio (historical characters), a concert by ur-punk band, King Caspar and the Mauritians. The description of a Roman potentate's labyrinthine palace is not short of Eco's library in "The Name of The Rose". The elaborate rendition of the life of a colony of rats, or the routine in the Papal kitchens, are nauseating but beguiling, and again not short of Patrick Suesskind's masterful "Perfume".

Some things work less well. The character of Brother Joerg is inconsistent. At the beginning he is a forceful geography teacher, but then he becomes a virtual blind and mute wreck who allows his flock to be dispersed and eventually lost. The rivalry between Portuguese and Spaniards over the division of the globe between the two naval powers is not clarified, and it could be without loss to the plot. The efficient killer Rufo is left hanging (he wanders off page about two thirds of the book and never turns up again). As noted above, the portions that take place aboard ships, or in Goa or Africa are not as interesting as those that occur in Europe, and neither are the characters or the episodes featured. I couldn't see why the Usedom monastery wasn't rebuilt, why bullying monk Gerhardt did not get his comeuppance (unlike Groot, who got his to the hilt), and why Salvestro returned to get slaughtered. Or, indeed, why the hugely likeable Bernardo was not allowed to join a wandering troupe of dwarfs as the mandatory giant, as seemed his destiny at some point.

So why do I give this book four stars? Because the good parts are very good, and the bad parts are much better than the good parts of other books I've read recently. Because many of the characters are unforgettable. Amalia and Bernardo are both excellent, and the Pope is masterful, along with his cohort of drunken cardinals and cynical minor bureaucrats. The demented noble Roman Colonna is formidable, and the S-M red-headed goddess, La Cavallerizza Sanguinosa has an undefined role but always manages to make a splash when she turns up. Norfolk is a man with a tough stomach, who knows his story, and is not afraid of the baroque. Minimalism has its uses, but historical fiction is not one of them.

This is a book that aims a lot higher than the average historical novel. The author's highly developed writing style as well as his erudition are on full display in this enormous, sprawling epic that ranges from prehistory to the 16th century in what seems to be northern Germany, through the squalors and splendors of Renaissance Rome during the papacy of Leo X Medici, to various epic sea journeys.

All sorts of disparate strands are woven together, all ultimately related to the absurd contest between Spain and Portugal over which will be the first country to gratify Pope Leo's whim: to own a rhinoceros to compliment his beloved elephant. The winner will get to divide the recently discovered "New World" to his country's advantage. The story is loosely based on historical fact: Leo did want a rhino, and he set up the competition between the two world powers more for his own amusement than for any serious political purpose.

Leo and his court are presented in all their vanity, corruption and obliviousness to the enormous issues facing the papacy at that time. The author is very strong on his presentation of the incredible squalor that surrounded the splendor of the papal court; his picture of Renaissance Rome is one you can smell as well as see.

I liked the author's description of Leo's "silly, fun-stuffed head:" a perfect characterization of Giovanni de' Medici, who might be described as a profoundly frivolous man. This is a novel where the characters take time to urinate and defecate, fornicate and masturbate, but only one character ever bathes!

Although the prose is often brilliant, it's just as often over-the-top and needlessly elaborated. A less indulgent editor could have insisted the book be trimmed by a good quarter, which would have improved it. But even in its shaggy, overgrown state, it's an impressive achievement.

"El rinoceronte del Papa" es una construcción novelesca impecable. Toda novela es una creación; todo novelista es un dios. Lawrence Norfolk ha creado una obra sin mancha. Personajes llenos de vida, una trama siempre viva, un manejo exquisito del lenguaje, un final increíblemente satisfactorio.

I agree in varying degrees with most of the other readers' comments about this book. I found the first half to be challenging, lush, entertaining, gripping, etc. and was looking forward to 600 pages just like it. But once the author got through the first two sections of the book, everything began to wander. The extreme versimilitude of the first half jarred with the growing elements of fantasy (magic realism?) which began to intrude in Roma, and by the time the scene shifted to West Africa, the author had lost me. If you want an analogy, I found the first half of the book to be a richly woven tapestry, well worth scrutiny, while the second half unraveled and became almost unintelligible. I was ultimately disappointed, the more so because of the early promise of the book. Maybe in the future? I'll be watching...

The opening pages which take the reader through the centuries of the ice age were indicative of what was to follow. The prose was compelling but very descriptive and I felt this was at the expense of narrative drive. I did not emerge from the book with a much clearer idea about what drove Niklot/Salvestro, or indeed many of the other characters in the book. While true life is often confusing, I would have welcomed a bit more "glue" holding the many different episodes together. Full marks to an earlier reviewer's dissection of the plot, much of which I missed---I don't think I'm particularly slow, and I like to be kept guessing, but not to the point where I forget which country I'm in. I skimmed the last hundred or so pages, feeling that I'd not taken adequate notes as I read it. I began to flounder in a welter of details quite early on in the process, so I'm not the best qualified judge, but the ending seemed anticlimactic. Plenty of brilliant scenes throughout the book, which was populated with a gallery of fantastic grotesques and others, and many of the scenes would have made great short stories. But ultimately the lack of narrative and construction made the book unwieldy. A pity, since the characters and their time were anyway so fascinating, and not covered so frequently these days.

After reading "Lempiere's Dictionary," one of my favorite books of all time, and then perusing the album cover for "The Pope's Rhinoceros," I thought that the total enjoyment of reading it was as sure as rain in Seattle. Well, lo and behold, as the sunshine reemerged in the Puget Sound region, so I have to admit, though seeing the brilliance of the writing, I was a bit disappointed in "The Pope's Rhinoceros." Though at times quite compelling and, in the end, definitely worth the work, there were too many times when I had to concentrate even more than I am usually willing to get a grasp of where Mr. Norfolk was proceeding. There were too many times when whole passages would begin, and it was not until about 2 or 3 pages into them that you even knew who the characters were. The tale could have used a bit more unfettered narrative drive, and a few less characters. Yet, despite all the objections, the book was still quite compelling and very exciting at times. But after "Lempiere," ....

I started this book with high hopes, since a friend loaned it to me and recommended it highly. However, I had to force myself to keep picking it up. The historical information is overwhelming, the characters are not anyone you care about, the underwater city, the monks, the pope's wish to be associated with a grey beast instead of a lion, etc. etc. is just too overwritten. Finally, I put it down never to pick up again... this is probably only the third book I have ever done this with!