: Hannibal Rising
Author: Thomas Harris
I bought Crichton’s Next as a printed book and listened to this one as an audiobook; I should have done them the other way around. Harris’ book is much better written, but confusing as an audiobook — it’s too easy to miss vital pieces of information if you aren’t paying attention. Harris himself reads it, which is cool: he does an impressive job, even doing character voices and speaking various languages. The story is simple enough: this is about the childhood of Hannibal, the serial killer from several of Harris’ other books. Here we meet Hannibal’s parents, his tutor, and see Hannibal’s keen intelligence. We also experience the horrors that turned him into a cold monster who eats human flesh. As you might expect, the book’s exceedinly grim at times, though Harris’ writing even makes that pleasurable (take, for instance, his description of a formerly bald man “who is now hirsute,” with “green tendrils” coming from his head… and we gradually realize the man’s head is severed and has been floating in a barrel for an extended period of time). The plot is not speedy, but the journey so delightful, filled with Hannibal’s key influences and experiences, that we are happy to let Harris’ pace things. We witness Hannibal’s first kill, and then it becomes obvious that the main plot is Hannibal’s quest for revenge. One by one he will kill the people who killed his family and abused him so cruelly as a child. Of course this is Hannibal Lector — these cannot be ordinary killings — and Harris makes them appropriately different and dramatic. The end result is surprisingly literate, considering the topic; Hannibal is without a doubt one of the most unusual and memorable characters in literature, and this book finally explains what created him, and why his character can be simultaneously sympathetic and horrific.
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