"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.
I dunno ... "A" for effort, I guess? The writing obviously took a lot of work, and there is some consummate craftsmanship going on here. Sure, the vocabulary seems too often to reach for the more obscure word (or the more obscure meaning of a word, such as using factor to refer to an agent) when there is a perfectly serviceable common word, but that is more irritating than blameworthy.The real problem is that the novel just doesn't really work. The jokes in the carnivalesque Rome chapters fall flat, the opening tale of the sunken city (Vintra? Vespa? I've already forgotten) and its monastry-sentinel is chucked overboard when the great sea-voyage begins, and there is an entire chapter centered around an African tribe (Nri) that seems out of place. Oh, and that hackneyed device of a eurocentric author writing from a superstitious, aboriginal perspective as if he knows how they think? Yeah, that's in here too. I cringe every time I encounter one of those.Still, the technique is superb, and at least half of the novel is quite good. I won't say that it's necessarily worth sticking through to the end, but the more stoic reader will plenty to enjoy in this novel.
What do You think about The Pope's Rhinoceros (2003)?
п'ять зірочок, хоч я не зовсім певна, чи до кінця зрозуміла, що тут відбулося (втім, і за це теж – текст такий розкішний і багатий, що з нього довго можна виловлювати все нові деталі й події)."носоріг для папи" – то книжка для вдумливого, але безупинного читання, стільки там важливих дрібничок, підказок, натяків. є купа речей, яких норфолк не вербалізує, а ще більше тих, які відштовхуються від основ, набудованих двісті сторінок тому. усе воно – імена, місця, події, наміри і вчинки – зрештою складається в цілісну картину, але так, що сфокусуватися можна тільки на частині її; переводиш погляд – і попередній фрагмент затуманюється.одна з найліпших речей у романі – те, як норфолк вкидає читача в текст, не потурбувавшись познайомити з персонажами (зате йому подобається знайомити з хронотопами – текст розпочинається ще до льодовикового періоду й за кількадесят сторінок заходить у середньовіччя) чи пояснити, що відбувається. відчуття таке, ніби справді опиняєшся в незнайомому місці серед незнайомих людей і тільки з того, як вони поводяться та що кажуть, можеш робити якісь висновки. всевидющий третьоосібний наратор є, але його значно більше цікавлять мотиви щурів чи риб, аніж людей: він не опускається до того, щоби препарувати персонажів.
—verbava
All of us dream and have nightmares. Sometimes a nightmare so luring, it might just be the salvation from the reality.“And Vineta is still there,” he murmured, “with all its temples and their treasure. …”And its people, too, his mother had said. Our people. When the water was clear, she told him, you might see them walking in the watery streets. Svantovit was down there with them. He could not save them, but neither could he desert them. Cold waters of the North, scorching Italian sun, changing sea winds and a flow of the great river create a fitting background for a story, slowly unraveling before your eyes. The story of a lost and still to be forgotten underwater city, of a boy, frightened and fighting for his life, of powerful men and cunning women, of betrayal and hope.It is not a straightforward plotline and you’d certainly have to wait for any real action to start. Prepare to be drawn away from the main events to see the sights (and there are plenty). Human life in the eyes of herring, dawn in XVI century Rome, Borgo rats fighting in the palace corridors, a real gargantuan feast, and many more small vignettes intertwined within the book, giving it a perfect baroque feel.The world of The Pope’s Rhinoceros has no heroes, or rather it has many, yet unlikely. Those are people playing the game against all odds, having agreed with the rules and following their own moral code (however ambiguous it might seem). Mercenaries, adventurers, politicians, and soldiers steadily go beyond the point of no return, and the world goes by. Verdict: The Pope’s Rhinoceros is a must-read for anyone who savours words and enjoys a big complex book every now and then.
—Anastasia
An exhausting read. A dense, literate novel, with some staggering sequences (the sequence of mankind's conquest of the sea, as narrated by successive generations of herring, is one of the most masterful things I have ever read) but also with a sprawl that, ultimately, the author cannot control. I love large novels, however this one feels like the editor's attentions were elsewhere. No masterpiece, true. Yet I can confidently state that Norfolk's love of words, and oddball character insight, will definitely have me visiting his back catalogue sooner rather than later.
—Sammy
