Hannibal: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Thomas Harris (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Horror lit's head chef Harris serves up another course in his Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter trilogy, and it's a pièce de résistance for those with strong stomachs. In the first book, Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), Hannibal diabolically helps the FBI track a fascinating serial killer. (Takes one to know one.) In The Silence of the Lambs, he advises fledgling FBI manhunter Clarice Starling, then makes a bloody, brilliant escape.

Years later, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno.

Pazzi is on the take from a character as scary as Hannibal: Mason Verger. When Verger was a young man busted for raping children, his vast wealth saved him from jail. All he needed was psychotherapy--with Dr. Lecter. Thanks to the treatment, Verger is now on a respirator, paralyzed except for one crablike hand, watching his enormous, brutal moray eel swim figure eights and devour fish. His obsession is to feed Lecter to some other brutal pets.

What happens when the Italian cop gets alone with Hannibal? How does Clarice's reunion with Lecter go from macabre to worse? Suffice it to say that the plot is Harris's weirdest, but it still has his signature mastery of realistic detail. There are flaws: Hannibal's madness gets a motive, which is creepy but lessens his mystery. If you want an exact duplicate of The Silence of the Lambs's Clarice/Hannibal duel, you'll miss what's cool about this book--that Hannibal is actually upstaged at points by other monsters. And if you think it's all unprecedentedly horrible, you're right. But note that the horrors are described with exquisite taste. Harris's secret recipe for success is restraint. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly
This narrative roils along a herky-jerky vector but remains always mesmerizing, as Harris's prose and insights, particularly his reveries about Hannibal, boast power and an overripe beauty. If at times the suspense slackens and the story slips into silliness, it becomes clear that this is a post-suspense novel, as much sardonic philosophical jest as grand-guignol thriller. Hannibal, we learnA"we" because Harris seduces reader complicity with third-person-plural narrationAis not as we presumed. The monster's aim is not chaos, but order. Through his devotion to manners and the connoisseur's life, in fact to form itself, he hopesAconsciouslyAto reverse entropy and thus the flow of time, to allow a dead sister to live again. He is not Dionysius but Apollo, and it is the barbarians who oppose him who are to be despised. Hannibal may be mad, but in this brilliant, bizarre, absurd novelAas in the public eyeAhe is also hero; and so, at novel's end, in blackest humor, Harris bestows upon him a hero's rewards, outrageously, mockingly. Agent, Morton Janklow. 1.3 million first printing; film rights to Dino De Laurentis. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 484 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; 1st British edition (June 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038529929X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385299299
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2,766 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #389,203 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Elegant Thriller, November 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hannibal (Audio Cassette)

I can't recall a more elegant thriller than "Hannibal"-- in its careful, restrained use of language, its well-drawn characters, and especially in its commanding use of painstaking research. The book is replete with interesting facts about medicine, history, forensics, zoology, animal husbandry, medieval literature, art, cooking, the city of Florence, the Italian language, classical music, and wine-- all presented with Thomas' sure, confident touch.

This is not a conventional sequel, and many fans of "The Silence of the Lambs" will surely be horrified by this book's extremely shocking conclusion. Those in particular who regarded Clarice Starling as a feminist icon (including, perhaps, Jody Foster) may feel betrayed. However, I think Harris should be commended for his courage. The easiest (and most profitable) thing for him to do would have been to give us a "Silence of the Lambs" rehash, tailor-made for another blockbuster film adaptation.

Most of the plot concerns Mason Verger, a meat-packing tycoon and an early victim of Hannibal Lecter. A child molester whose victims include his own sister, Verger is as diabolical in his way as the doctor himself. Paralyzed and disfigured by his brush with Lecter, he is planning an elaborate and ghastly revenge-- which Harris describes with a morbid lyricism worthy of Edgar Allen Poe. The conflict here is between two monsters: one attractive (Lecter), one unattractive (Verger). Harris subtly encourages us to root for Lecter, giving "Hannibal" a moral landscape far more ambiguous, more disturbing, and more ironic than most thrillers.

Although I'm saving my pennies for the hardcover version, the 6-hour audio abridgement that I was lucky enough to find at my local library features a nicely understated reading by Thomas Harris himself-- speaking in a craggy, Mississippi-inflected voice that made me think of Mark Twain.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good storytelling, bad story, January 14, 2003

By	jenbird "book and classic movie fiend" (Havertown, PA) - See all my reviews

Thomas Harris lured me into this book with his reputation ("Silence of the Lambs") and kept me there, albeit reluctantly, with his skills as a writer. Unfortunately, in the case of "Hannibal," the plot leaves a lot to be desired. The whole thing was so bizarre that I had to finish it just to see how it turned out, but did I like what I was reading? Not so much. I'm referring specifically to the ending, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous. I can't accept that the Clarice Starling readers have come to know, admire, and even love, would ever run off with Lecter.

As far as the other characters are concerned, the new ones are so far over the top as to be completely unrealistic (Mason and Margot), and most of those we remember from "Silence" behave in ways that are just too outrageous to be credible. I finished this book and just sat with my mouth open, unable to believe what I had just read. "Sex is a splendid structure they add to every day," is not a sentence I ever wanted to read about Starling and Lecter. It's just...wrong. Granted, these are Harris' characters and he can do with them what he likes, but I think he dropped the ball on this one.

My last complaint: Harris' clumsy attempts to explain the origin of Hannibal's evil. He should have left well enough alone. To me, it is much scarier *not* to know why Hannibal Lecter is the way he is; it leaves open the possibility that it anyone could become such a monster. I imagine people had their own theories, and when something like that is left to the reader's imagination, it can assume many shapes. When Harris gives us Lecter's backstory, as unusual as it may be, he forever closes the door on our possibilities, and thereby reduces Lecter as a villain, although he does perhaps become somewhat more sympathetic a character. I don't think we needed to know *why* Lecter is evil; it is enough to simply know that he is.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fitting End To The Lecter Trilogy, February 15, 2001

By	James O'Blivion (Nowhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hannibal (Mass Market Paperback)

Being one of Thomas Harris' most dedicated fans, I purchased this novel upon the day of its release and eagerly gobbled up every sinewy morsel. After finishing, completely in awe of Harris' work (as always), I was astonished that so many had been disappointed, even appalled, by this offering. Speaking as one who has gone as far as to seek out and purchase first editions of all four Harris novels, I can say this..."Hannibal" was NOT as good as "The Silence of the Lambs"...this much is true. Then again, "The Silence of the Lambs" wasn't as good as "Red Dragon" was. But "The Silence of the Lambs" was still a fine novel and a fitting sequel to "Red Dragon"...just as "Hannibal" is a fitting final entry in the series. What Harris has given us here is almost a parody, a caricature of Lecter as he appeared in the first two novels...and why not? Now that Lecter is free, is it not plausible that he would be behaving quite differently than he did while confined? As for one reviewer's note that Lecter has been transformed into a "psychopath-wizard-pharmacist-scholar-surgeon"...well, apart from being a wizard, Hannibal has always been skilled in anatomy (see the previous books for further elaboration on this point) and his training as a psychiatrist would certainly explain his knowledge of pharmaceuticals...and who can deny that the good doctor has ALWAYS been a scholar? So, why is it that the same readers who believed Lecter capable of accurately depicting the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo (as seen from the Belvedere, mind you) solely from memory find his actions and capabilities in this novel so far-fetched? Lecter's intelligence, let us remember, has never been successfully measured by any standardized testing. As for Starling's actions in the book's closing chapters, she WAS under the influence of heavy drugs when she first bonded, shall we say, with Lecter...and, after learning the reasoning behind Lecter's cannibalism, she felt a certain kinship with him, and even an empathy for this man who was initially described to her as a monster. And what this novel does so brilliantly is to bring to light the root source of Lecter's psychosis...something which had always been the subject of fierce doubt. After all, people don't become serial killers (much less CANNIBALISTIC serial killers) without reason. And the childhood trauma experienced by Lecter as a child in WWII Europe certainly explains well enough why the doctor has such a taste for human flesh. And let's not forget that Thomas Harris didn't HAVE to write this novel. He was at the peak of his popularity with "The Silence of the Lambs" after the film version prompted many to pick up the novel at their local bookstores...he had written three #1 best-selling novels, all of which were adapted for the screen, and he was living the good life in Italy, feeling no financial or career-oriented pressure. He never had to write another word as long as he lived. He had earned his living, and he'd certainly made his mark. This novel was a GIFT from Mr. Harris to us, his loyal fans worldwide. It's a gift which I, personally, had been waiting YEARS for...and I loved every word of it...