Hannibal Rising [Paperback]

So, seven years after Hannibal, Thomas Harris delivers the fourth entry in the series that won't stop paying out. Hannibal Rising, badly titled though it is, is a potentially intriguing prequel to the previous three Lecter novels, explaining the "evolution of his evil", from when we first meet him at roughly age eight, to when the book closes, with Hannibal in his early twenties and about to embark upon a medical career in America.

To be brutal, there's not much more to be had from this novel than a synopsis could give (and many have). The noble Lecter family are living in Lecter castle when Hitler's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union turns the Baltic forests into a bloody disaster area. Hannibal's family are killed in the turmoil, including his treasured little sister Mischa. Hannibal's uncle Robert eventually whisks him away to Paris to live with him and his wife, Japanese Lady Murasaki. Whilst there, he flourishes as a medical student. Uncle Robert dies, and Hannibal remains with Murasaki. The book is easily sectioned off in this way, and eventually turns into a grim revenge tale as Hannibal chases down those soldiers responsible for his sister's death.

And that's it, really. Garnish with a well-turned, ominously poetic sentence or two, then expand with lots of mediocre or downright bad ones, and you have Hannibal Rising. It is both a ridiculous affair and a perfectly enjoyable book. Employ knives of intelligence to get the cut of its jib, and it obviously falls apart - especially when stood against Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and even Hannibal (which I will unashamedly praise to anyone interested). However, silence your critical faculties, and the whole thing is fine, replete with all the basic things one might want in a thriller: easy writing, swift pace, interesting settings, apparently interesting characters, a plausible if macabre motive, and, of course, blood, bone and death. And all that is fine, but this is Thomas Harris, and one does expect slightly more than the "basic" things.

It is very hard for me not to be tempted by the idea that the whole thing is a kind of joke, that Harris is being wilfully perverse. His previous novels are testament to his talent, his intelligence, his writerly ability. So where does Hannibal Rising come from? Is he on autopilot, writing with his eyes closed, giving the public what they want? I find it hard to believe that he has "lost" it. Or has he placed his tongue in his cheek and sent Lecter up? This genesis is, after all, one that Lecter himself would find laughable. Or, at least, the Lecter of the first novels would. Indeed, in the first novel he said "nothing bad happened to me" (and had a sixth finger, too). But what does this say about Harris, the way he views his work, his characters, his readers, etc? Either way, I don't think the implications are that good.

More bad things: the characters are, on the face of it, interesting, but in the end they're empty. Even the young Hannibal isn't that interesting. There's no real insight into his mind: it's just like watching a vaguely curious insect respond to light and shade. The chapters are too short. The story has little development. Where's Harris' lush detail? Where's the tautness, or even the suspense? What's the point of the whole book, really?

The worst thing, though, is the entire concept of the thing. The "explanation" of Hannibal Lecter. We didn't need it, and we didn't want it. (Indeed, in terms of "explaining" someone evil, I see strange parallels between this book and Norman Mailer's latest effort!) It removes so much of what made Lecter what he is. Revealing too much of your monster is one of the cardinal sins of this kind of thing (be it a book, or a film, whatever). It's not even a good explanation: guess what, it's Hitler's fault. It's an absolutely ridiculous peg to hang the cause of Lecter's deviance on. It's all the more ridiculous given that Harris explains almost all of Hannibal's foibles in the light of one event from his past. Which is both laughable, and a quite ridiculous idea of how people's characters are formed.

Harris makes us feel empathy for Lecter, and that made me uncomfortable. It's easy, too; the easy way out. Give him a little sister, kill her, oh how we pity. Easy emotional manipulation. I don't think it's morally "wrong" for Harris to make us feel empathetic towards Lecter, that's not really my criticism, but did we really want to? Or need to? It brings us closer to him, and takes a lot away from the previous books because of it. The turnaround Harris has made with the character is almost criminal. It's not necessarily "bad" if it were in isolation, but when measured against Harris's previous work, it doesn't compare at all well. I get the sense that this back-story is exactly the kind of story Lecter himself would make up to amuse people.

In the end, it's an ok thriller. But the whole thing is unnecessary, and even so could have been done a whole lot better. My advice is to leave the original Lecter trilogy alone, and leave this well alone. In the end, it reduces the power of the whole cannon.

I don't think I've ever seen a book bagged as savagely on Amazon as this - so much so that, despite having pre-ordered and received my copy, I almost didn't bother to read it.

what a pleasant surprise, then to find a beautifully crafted, clever, literary novel, developing ever further one of the most complex characters of modern fiction, packed full of the same metaphor and figure as was Hannibal - a further stage in Thomas Harris' development from author of intelligent thrillers to a proper, literary, writer. Unlike most people, I liked Hannibal, but thought it was a bit baroque for its own good. With Hannibal Rising, Thomas Harris has kept the melody, but cut the ornamentation down to a plainsong.

The character Hannibal Lecter's progress from his walk-on part in Red Dragon is intriguing: Thomas Harris can scarcely have expected, let alone intended, that a character seemingly named for the sake of a cheesy rhyme would, er, consume thirty years of his professional life. In Red Dragon Hannibal Lecter was mostly a bogeyman (at that point he displayed the classic psychopathic trait of childhood cruelty to animals - which has long since been revised into an uncommon affinity for assorted birds and horses): only in the novel Hannibal did Harris really begin to extend a figure who transpired to be more supernatural than human (there are unmistakable resonances of Dracula) and not really immoral at all. Perhaps this is Harris' most shocking initiative of all: A heartless psychopath, via a preference for eating only the rude, is now given a full moral basis and, what's more, we're on his side as he wields the knife. That's a pretty subversive shift in perspective, and Harris has executed it without us even realising what he was up to. Yet people still complain.

The heart quickens briefly in the suspense, but mostly that's not what Harris is interested in, and nor can he really go to town since, by definition, we know what the outcome will be: Hannibal must survive, and given his superhuman faculties it is difficult to believe he is in any real danger throughout.

What Thomas Harris is more interested in is the figurative devices through which he explores his doppelganger and by which he binds him to the existing canon. For those who bemoaned the lack of the writer's craft in this book I can only suggest you read it again, for barely a word is wasted, and Harris' writing is as deft and lyrical here as ever I've read it. There are no accidents, and it is not one that evil is personified by the "totenkopf" (or "death's head") insignia, nor that unspeakable slaughter of innocents once again takes place in a barn, just as it did in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal (now we have a full circle: by rescuing Catherine, Starling has stopped her lambs screaming, and by avenging Mischa, Hannibal has stopped his). Every sentence is stuffed with allusions to the senses, and particularly smells, and sparks (such as those in Hannibal's maroon eyes) are a constant presence.

The best news is that - albeit another decade away, there is clearly more to come: Will Graham has been the most interesting and complicated of Lecter's antagonists, and it can be no accident that Harris has saved the most fascinating period of both of their lives - between Lecter's arrival in Baltimore and his only proper apprehension by Graham - for last. We have yet to find out what happened to Benjamin Raspail and Mason Verger, and Harris has positioned himself nicely to finish the cycle with the police procedural which most of his fans, judging by this site, seem to crave above all else.

Olly Buxton

Right to begin with it is necessary to point out that this is not thomas harris' best book. But then again considering the competition that doesn't mean its necessarily a bad book. Compared to the others Hannibal Rising's characters are far more shallow, and the plot considerably less believable in a real world setting. It is still however a compelling read, and considerably better than most of the other thrillers/crime novels out there, and lets face it who could read the first three and not read this one as well.

The book still contains Harris' unique style and his ability to make some truely rounded characters for the "villans". It has been critisied for the fact that hannibals character doesn't match exactly that seen in the later books, it is probably worth pointing out that the end of this book doesn't line up exactly with red dragon, thus there is still time remaining for future character development. some people will probably be put off by hannibals drive for just revenge and what can only be called natural justice. However this does infact add an edge of satisfaction to the book, given that most people during their lives have been annoyed enough by people to wish them some serious harm. If not it is a puzzlement as to why they would want to read about and insane serial killing cannibal.

In short if you want deep character development of the other novels your probably better off with some Dostoyevsky or similar, if you want to continue what can only be called morrbid facination with hannibal then this is the book for you. Ok this is the weakest of Harris' (bar black sunday) but in honesty it would be difficult to write a better sequeal without becoming extremely formulaic.