Umberto Eco: The Name of The Rose

This book was not what I expected. I expected something more meta-literate from the hands of Eco, a noted semiotician. Which is not to say it was illiterate--some of my favorite moments came from his references to Boethius or Apuleius, and I confess to a little pride in having read the referenced works. In spite of its pleasures, the book never really seemed to reach beyond its own pages. It made gestures in the direction of certain worthy themes, the interreliance of books upon each other, etc. But I was dissapointed to realize at the close that Eco had written only what he had set out to write: a novel.