Hannibal Rising - any good?

[SleepyWitch]

yesterday i discovered to my great surprise that there is a new book by Thomas Harris "Hannibal Rising".
I've read Silence, Hannibal and Red Dragon and loved them, but I'm not particularly fond of prequels, so I'm not sure I should buy it.
I'm not actually sure I want to know all the details of why Hannibal is what he is. Maybe what makes him so interesting is that his background is a mystery?

Would you recommend the book?

[Eagleheart]

I have only just discovered there is a new book...Of course I am convulsively awaiting to see what should be the attempt of Harris to display the whole development of the character of Hannibal...I suspect that any straying away from the intermittent occurence of Hannibal will somehow distort the image of the enigmatic psychopat...After all fragmentary knowledge is exactly what Harris biulds his story on...So I will have to agree with SleepyWitch that some of the mysteriousness may disappear, naturally for the sake of art it will not be pleasing...On the other hand if well structured it may bring understanding, which I value much more than successful attention keeping...

[SleepyWitch]

cool. maybe I'll buy myself the book for Christmas and read it later on in Jan or Feb, so we could discuss it if you like?

[Eagleheart]

cool. maybe I'll buy myself the book for Christmas and read it later on in Jan or Feb, so we could discuss it if you like?
Great idea, but first I would have to overcome some of the local market's old "Sorry, still unavailable" difficulties...If I get this book my Christmas is beyond the cookies of my grandmother...

[SleepyWitch]

take your time :) I've got lots of reading to do over Xmas myself so I'll probably read in in February at the earliest

[*Classic*Charm*]

Sorry to drag up an old thread...I'm new.

I just wanted to say that I recently finished reading Hannibal rising, and the frist thing I noticed was just how obvious it was that Harris wrote the screenplay first, and the novel second. Some of the depth of character and action was lost. I mean, simply, that Hannibal's thoughts and actions and those of others were very literal- what was exactly said was what was done, as it would have been if written for film.

About what the previous post mentioned about losing some of the mysterious nature of Hannibal's character, I thought that was lost after the third novel, Hannibal, where Harris made it known that Dr. Lecter was not in love with Clarice Starling, but was in fact trying to carve her out of time and and fill her space in time with his dead sister. This whole notion forces the reader to abandon the hope that Lector might have some trace of normalcy- his theories about time being entropic and wanting to be able to reverse that lose (as odd as this sounds in speaking about a characeter who's a cannibal) credibility.

With that said, Hannibal Rising is not really an explanation, but a window into how a person might come to be that way. It restores Lecter's credibilty once the reader sees that his childhood experiences, particularly that of the death of his sister Mischa, are not like those any person (that I have heard of) has ever related, and it results in a person that no one could ever be.

Read it- you won't regret it.

[alec_ritchie]

It's funny that you offer that interpretation of the ending of 'Hannibal', because I thought that once his attempts to 'brainwash' Clarice into believing that she was Mischa had failed that she had accepted him and had sex with him and it was this love that pacified him.

As for the newest book. I have read it and there are some beautiful moments in it. There is one moment at the beginning of the book whereby a swan is presented being run over by a tank and I thought the contrast was quite effective.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Interesting point.

My problem with it, however, was that in drugging up Clarice, he was able to find out everything about her- what made her tick. What had always fascinated him about her was the context in which he met her. For once, there was something he didn't fully understand. I don't think he could completely comprehend the true relationship Clarice had with her father, and the fact that her entire life was based on that one relationship. Her position in the FBI and desire to prove herself was crucial. Once he knows everything about her, there's nothing left about her with which he'll be intrigued. His interest in her will not be the same once she's been removed from the context in which she first came to him. Once he's got her attentding the opera with in him in Europe, she's not the same person.

It seems to me that he's unravelled all her layers and all that's left is sex, and what he can make of her.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Oh, and I completely agree with you about Rising- the contrast between the placidness of nature and the malevolence of war and society was stunning.

By the way...no author I've read alludes the way Harris does. It's seamless. Any opinions?

[SleepyWitch]

It's funny that you offer that interpretation of the ending of 'Hannibal', because I thought that once his attempts to 'brainwash' Clarice into believing that she was Mischa ...
oops, that has totally escaped me... are there different versions of the book? i remember that he tried to brainwash her in the film but i didn't get what exactly he was trying to brainwash her into believing. as for the book, i do remember that it talked about his sister and the Nazi stuff but I can't remember this bit.
so maybe i'd better re-read Hannibal first :)

[*Classic*Charm*]

Sleepywitch, don't feel confused. The movie left out the entire Mischa plotline.

And as for the point about Hannibal brainwashing Clarice into believing that she was Mischa, I have to disagree. Hannibal talked to Clarice about Mischa, he never tried to convince her that what he was saying was about her. I think it was more a matter of...I'm not sure how to put this.

It was as though Hannibal was trying to create an equilibrium in Clarice's life that would make her no longer exist, and he could then recreate Mischa in what was left. For every thing that had gone or was going wrong in Clarice's life, Hannibal justified it- gave some reason as to why it did not really matter to the world around her. He explained everything; how her parents would have been proud of her no matter what, and how her work for the FBI was not as crucial as it was made to seem. In balancing out all the good and bad things she had done, Hannibal tried to make Clarice non-existant. He wanted an empty body that he could then fill with Mischa. It didn't work, though, as Hannibal realized that there was something more to Clarice that he could not dispose of, and that's when they ran off together.

Wow. Sorry, I got a little carried away there. I don't know if any of that made sense, but it's hard to desrcibe what I think happened. I just think it Hannibal was trying more to empty Clarice's place in the world and refill it with Mischa, than convince Clarice that she was Mischa.

[SleepyWitch]

Sleepywitch, don't feel confused. The movie left out the entire Mischa plotline.

And as for the point about Hannibal brainwashing Clarice into believing that she was Mischa, I have to disagree. Hannibal talked to Clarice about Mischa, he never tried to convince her that what he was saying was about her. I think it was more a matter of...I'm not sure how to put this.

It was as though Hannibal was trying to create an equilibrium in Clarice's life that would make her no longer exist, and he could then recreate Mischa in what was left. For every thing that had gone or was going wrong in Clarice's life, Hannibal justified it- gave some reason as to why it did not really matter to the world around her. He explained everything; how her parents would have been proud of her no matter what, and how her work for the FBI was not as crucial as it was made to seem. In balancing out all the good and bad things she had done, Hannibal tried to make Clarice non-existant. He wanted an empty body that he could then fill with Mischa. It didn't work, though, as Hannibal realized that there was something more to Clarice that he could not dispose of, and that's when they ran off together.

Wow. Sorry, I got a little carried away there. I don't know if any of that made sense, but it's hard to desrcibe what I think happened. I just think it Hannibal was trying more to empty Clarice's place in the world and refill it with Mischa, than convince Clarice that she was Mischa.

wow, that's a pretty sophisticated theory. makes me want to re-read the book :) thanks :)