In The Name of the Rose, [Eco's] first work of fiction, he has bestowed his own talents lavishly on his created sleuth. William knows that "the universe is talkative … and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly." His acumen in deciphering the secret signs of the world would be sufficient delight, but Eco's complex themes include sparkling disquisitions on the arts of the Middle Ages—its architecture, manuscript illumination, gemmology, herbarism, numerology, cuisine, and witchcraft, as well as witty and erudite depictions of its manners, morals, and intricately twined politics and theology.
Eco has done more than create a learned diversion. The Name of the Rose (like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Pale Fire) is a mirrored hallway; each strand of the tale is in some sense merely a reflection, a blind alley, a red herring. As the clues proliferate and William and Adso approach the heart of the labyrinth, so do the possibilities of what they may find there. Yet, as they follow one red herring after another, the riddle is nonetheless resolved, and its solution reveals Eco's novel to be an eloquent speculum mundi of our own age. The Name of the Rose is an antidetective-story detective story; as a semiotic murder mystery it is superbly entertaining; it is also an extraordinary work of novelistic art. (p. 76)
Jeffrey Schaire, in a review of "The Name of the Rose," in Harper's (copyright © 1983 by Harper's Magazine; all rights reserved; reprinted from the August, 1983 issue by special permission), Vol. 267, No. 1599, August, 1983, pp. 75-6.
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