The Silence of the Lambs

Oct 27, 2012 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-thriller, adapted-to-screen, june-read, bram-stoker-winner, serial-killers, psychos

I need to get round reading this, whats put me off is that the movie has been played on the TV so many times now Clarice and Lecter are quite vivid in my mind. I am sure the book has lot more to offer as Harris is one of my high ranking thriller writers.
Some trivia on the movie...
Like "Casablanca", this movie contains a famous misquoted line: most people quote Lecter's famous "Good evening, Clarice" as "Hello, Clarice." This is not a misquote from the first movie but an actual quote from the se...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: award-nominee-bram-stoker, award-winner-bram-stoker, multiple-award-nominee, award-nominee-world-fantasy, psychos, audiobook, award-nominee-locus, 1980-1989, crime, thriller, the-creeps

CONTENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Out of respect for Thomas Harris’s superb novel, I have decided that no pictures of ANTHONY HOPKINS will appear in this review. Thank you for your understanding.

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Another one of those terrific situations where I saw the movie first (and loved it) and then eventually decided to read the book... and loved it too. Score!!! Now assuming that most people not suffering from the after-effects of severe head trauma know the basic plot concerning FBI trainee “Hello.....more

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Jul 31, 2008 Martine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: film, modern-fiction, north-american, thriller

Call me a freak, but I have a bit of a crush on Hannibal Lecter. He may be the scariest fuck out there (certainly scarier than the supposed monster of the book, Buffalo Bill), but he just oozes style and knowledge. In fact, he has so much style and knowledge that he doesn't come off as a ridiculous prick when he says things like, 'A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone'* or 'Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odour is trans-3-...more Call me a freak, but I have a bit of a crush on Hannibal Lecter. He may be the scariest fuck out there (certainly scarier than the supposed monster of the book, Buffalo Bill), but he just oozes style and knowledge. In fact, he has so much style and knowledge that he doesn't come off as a ridiculous prick when he says things like, 'A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone'* or 'Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odour is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.' Quite the contrary -- he sounds cool saying these things. Sophisticated, even. In this and many other ways, Dr Lecter is so utterly fascinating that you'll still find yourself rooting for him after he has committed several heinous (but brilliant!) murders, hoping he'll stay out of the hands of the police and live out his life in freedom. Now that's quality writing for you.

As you can probably tell from the above, I like The Silence of the Lambs, which is to say the book on which the movie was based. Except for the fact that Harris makes Clarice rather stupid** and that the dialogue in the book is a bit too clever and masculine for its own good***, it's a solid and exciting will-they-find-him-in-time-to-save-the-girl story -- a page-turner if ever there was one. The characters aren't terribly easy to identify with, but that's all right, because for one thing, they're cool (had I mentioned that yet?), and for another, they all have a clearly defined quest. They don't necessarily have the same quest, but hey, that only serves to increase the tension.

In some regards the book is better than the film. Remember those stupid anagrams from the movie? They're not in the book (except for the bilirubin one, which I actually quite like). The book makes its connections in a much more logical, less what-the-fuck?-ish way. It also has a more realistic romance, though not necessarily a better one. On the down side, I think Thomas Harris must have kicked himself for not having come up with the closing line of the film ('I'm having an old friend for dinner') himself. In my opinion, it's the best closing line in cinematic history, unmatched by the ending of the book. Still, it's a satisfying read. Very satisfying. As satisfying as the movie, and that's saying a fair bit.

......................

* Yes, that's what he says in the book. Not 'a nice Chianti'. I've been reliably informed by those in the know (I myself do not actually drink wine) that Amarone and Chianti are not in fact the same thing. 'Chianti' does sound better than 'Amarone' in this line, doesn't it?

** In the book, Dr Lecter tells Clarice in one of their first interviews that Billy has kidnapped large-chested Catherine Martin because 'he wants a vest with tits on it'. He then goes on to say in their next meeting that 'Billy is making a girl suit out of real girls'. And despite these incredibly obvious clues (which cannot be rude jokes on Lecter's part as he's far too sophisticated to make such rude jokes) it takes Clarice, who is supposed to be really intelligent, the entire rest of the book to figure out what it is that Billy wants from his victims. They wisely changed that in the movie, where Clarice doesn't have her entire quest spelled out for her right at the beginning.

*** I've never met any women who speak to each other the way Clarice and Ardelia do. Then again, I've never met any brilliant FBI trainees, so what do I know? Perhaps they do speak to each other like that at Quantico. I guess I'll never find out. (Anyone out there have FBI-trained friends? Anyone? Bueller?)
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Dec 20, 2011 Mike (the Paladin) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A creep fest or gore fest that I read some time ago. I was into "audio books" in my work vehicle at the time, listening to books between jobs and on my commute rather than the radio....I listened to this book. Was I crazy or something?

I've never read anything else by Harris. My wife was the "horror" fan (and no matter what genre this book gets placed in officially it really belongs with horror). She "read, Red Dragon" (read that out loud and it sounds a bit odd...."read Red"? Oh well just a whim...more

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May 07, 2013 Johann Coetzer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned, horror, books-i-liked

Ok here we go with a decent review.

I have seen the movie itself quite a few times, mostly because of Anthony Hopkins and it is a very good movie to watch.
Now the book, the book was first published in 1988 and the movie did stay quite true to the book and that does not happen quite often.
If you have seen the movie and most have you will not miss much by not reading the book.
The book does fill in a few holes that is in the movie but they are so minute.

This book is a really good read, if you can re...more

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Nov 23, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: suspense-thriller

I can smell your cunt!

Imagine if you are a woman and you are alone walking in a dark hallway of a solitary confinement in a hospital for criminally insane. You are about to meet a serial killer who eats his victims' brain, sweetbreads, liver, etc. Then after meeting that killer, you hear that same man again saying I sliced my wrist so I can bleed, watch me die! and you feel splatters of liquid on your face that you thought to be blood, only to realize that it is semen.

I saw the book's movie ada...more I can smell your cunt!

Imagine if you are a woman and you are alone walking in a dark hallway of a solitary confinement in a hospital for criminally insane. You are about to meet a serial killer who eats his victims' brain, sweetbreads, liver, etc. Then after meeting that killer, you hear that same man again saying I sliced my wrist so I can bleed, watch me die! and you feel splatters of liquid on your face that you thought to be blood, only to realize that it is semen.

I saw the book's movie adaptation twice. That 1991 multi-Oscar winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lectern and Jodie Foster as FBI Agent Trainee Clarice Starling. With English not as my major tongue, dialogs can easily escape me while watching the movie. But not when I am holding and reading the book. I savor and marvel at each word in the scene that I really like while recalling the movie. Sometimes, after reading the book, I buy a copy of the movie and hear those dialogs again. Oh the magic of words! The brilliance of the writer!

Thomas Harris (born 1940), American, is known for his Hannibal Lectern series and The Silence of the Lambs is its most popular piece. According to Wiki, Harris is elusive so little is known about himself except that he calls up his mother everyday, wherever he is, to discuss his works and other stuff. He married a fellow student so I think and pray that his male characters, Dr. Lectern or the serial killer on the loose, Buffalo Bill (who skins his prey, mostly fat smooth-skinned women, that explains the name) are not based on himself.

I wonder how Harris could have thought of those conversations between a Virginia psychology graduate with honors, Starling and well-known psychiatrist Dr. Lectern. A psychologist and a psychiatrist in a dark solitary confinement. A young woman and a middle-age man. A trainee and a veteran. Like a lion and a gazelle. Similar to one of my recent reads, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, I love it when an author effectively uses contrast on his/her characters! (less)

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Oct 19, 2011 C.L. Bevill rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Honestly, I read this what, twenty years ago. It was way before the movie. I think it's Thomas Harris' opus because it still rocks twenty years later. Clarice is struggling with her entry into FbI-dom. She wants to do the right thing. Jack Crawford throws her at Hannibal Lecter and well, let's just say that you may never want to visit a psychiatrist, just in case. Seriously, Thomas Harris must have taken a criminal investigator's bath to write this. Wonderfully suspenseful. Definitely creepy. (I...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Alexandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: belletristik, horror, krimi, usa, book2moviechallenge

Book2moviechallenge 2012:
1/12: Film ist berühmter als als die Vorlage

Buch: 4 Sterne
Der Roman von Thomas Harris ist ein sehr spannender solider Krimi, der durch seine abgeklärte analytische Sprache und Dramaturgie weit weniger gruselig ist, als ich mir erhofft hatte. Ständig wird so kopflastig, wie die Hauptfigur Agentin Clarice Starling denkt und handelt, analysiert, bewertet, kategorisiert und bemüht sachlich alle Szenen beschrieben, so wie es wahrscheinlich beim FBI in der Realität bei Masse...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Lightreads rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mystery, horror

I'm assuming this book was once shocking and groundbreaking. And okay, yes, eww with the eating people and the skinning. But also? Shut the fuck up, Thomas Harris. There are few things more obnoxious than a male author with a hard-on for his female protagonist. Worth reading for Hannibal the Cannibal, because I dig that abnormal psychology stuff, but did I mention the objectification? The sexism? The way the reader is never allowed to forget
about gender? How every male she meets falls for the he...more

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Mar 19, 2009 Shanon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

I read this book so long ago but I remember that I have never been more scared while reading a book. I even made my dog sleep in the bed with me (a very bad habit to start)

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Jun 13, 2013 Marwan Asmar added it · review of another edition

It grips the reader from the first page to the last. An incredible narrative in suspense where we are left to deal with the psychology of murder and serial killing. The book is far-better than the film, giving us much insight into the workings of an unstable mind, and the depravity it can reach. We are introduced to Hannibal Lecter the psychologist, a brilliant man with a disturbed mind who taunts the police by giving them only piecemeal information on catching the killer, but he himself escapes...more

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Jun 12, 2013 Ririn Miu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, psychology, crime-and-thriller

Berbeda dengan buku pendahulunya, Red Dragon, yang lebih banyak bercerita dari sudut pandang tokoh antagonisnya, Francis Dolarhyde, buku kedua ini lebih banyak menyorot tentang sisi prosedural dan karakterisasi tokoh protagonis utamanya, Clarice Starling. Karena si Starling ini juga tokoh yang lebih menarik daripada Will Graham dari buku 1, jadilah saya lebih suka buku ini. Di buku ini juga lebih banyak menceritakan tentang Dr. Lecter, setidaknya cara pandang dia akan kasus yang ditangani Starli...more

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Jun 04, 2013 Melani rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: demon, novel, psychological, sophisticated, twist, gruesome

The Silence of the Lambs is a second part in the tales of the awesome Dr.Hannibal Lecter whom is shut away in an asylum for being a dubbed psychotic. When the trainee cop, Clarice Starling is assigned the duty of interviewing the infamous Hannibal the Cannibal, she is sent into an ongoing investigation on a serial killer named Buffalo Bill because of his noted skinning of different sections of the body on his female victims. When Clarice speaks to Lecter, she feels unnerved, but each time they m...more

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Jun 04, 2013 Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The real draw of Silence of the Lambs is Hannibal Lecter; In a role poorly described as duo-antagonist, Lecter manipulates, undermines, and very occasionally aids nearly all of the main characters. You come for Dr. Lecter, probably one of the most horrifying and magnetic villains ever written, but you will stay for Clarice Starling. Starling is written smart and tough with a touch of ambitious naivete, struggling with the culture of the FBI and the world at large. Starling is motivated not only...more

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Jun 03, 2013 Alex Christensen added it · review of another edition

The Silence of the Lambs, written by Thomas Harris, is a bone chilling dive into the world of serial killers and madmen. It is now an award winning picture starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. The movie is almost as creepy as the book. The book is about a rookie FBI officer in training, named Clarice Starling, along with her boss, Jack Crawford, are on the hunt for an insane serial killer, known to the public as Buffalo Bill. And to track him down, they must challenge the most evil mind kn...more The Silence of the Lambs, written by Thomas Harris, is a bone chilling dive into the world of serial killers and madmen. It is now an award winning picture starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. The movie is almost as creepy as the book. The book is about a rookie FBI officer in training, named Clarice Starling, along with her boss, Jack Crawford, are on the hunt for an insane serial killer, known to the public as Buffalo Bill. And to track him down, they must challenge the most evil mind known to man. The mind of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, or to the public, Hannibal the Cannibal. No spoilers, but this book dives into some creepy, reeeeaallllyyy uncomfortable territory, like cannibalism. This book is great if you can handle some uncomfortable things, and it is the greatest spine chilling mystery/ thriller ever written.

This book goes really far into the world of insanity and plays with your mind at times. It questions the lines between good and evil, especially with Dr. Lecter. This book is extremely creepy and shows you there are people out there who do terrible things for fun. The book can get really uncomfortable and make you cringe. SPOILER ALERT! This book talks about the killing of human beings, skinning, scalping and wearing of human skin, cannibalism, phycopaths, transexuality, and other things your parents would never let you see at a young age. The killer, Buffalo Bill, kidnaps large girls, kills them, harvests their skin, and dumps them. To know what he does with the skin, read the book. To find him, Clarice Starling must confront Dr. Lecter, and extremely intelligent psychiatrist, locked up for life in the asylum, because he would kill people, and then make a nice dinner out of them, which means EAT THEM. He is the craziest, and scariest person in the book, because of how his mind works. “A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big amarone.” He is able to get into your head, and manipulate you, because he was a physiatrist. This book definitely crosses the lines of god and evil, and shows us what people are truly capable of doing, and how the minds of madmen function.

This is a great book, if you think you can handle it, and enjoy a great mystery/thriller. The one bad point of the book, is who sometimes it gets a little complicated if your simple minded, especially when Clarice is talking to Dr. Lecter, where he uses a lot of physiatrist terms. Other than that, I recommend this book to anyone who thinks they can handle it.
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Jun 02, 2013 Ana Mardoll rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Silence of the Lambs / 0099446782

On the grounds that everyone else on earth has seen the movie, I rented Silence of the Lambs over the weekend and found it surprisingly better than I'd expected: as far as classic films go, the movie held up well, and I was pleased to find how much of the movie explores institutional misogyny in the FBI and how Clarice Starling is forced to navigate a lot of hurdles that her male colleagues don't. Indeed, the movie piqued my interest enough that I bought the...more The Silence of the Lambs / 0099446782

On the grounds that everyone else on earth has seen the movie, I rented Silence of the Lambs over the weekend and found it surprisingly better than I'd expected: as far as classic films go, the movie held up well, and I was pleased to find how much of the movie explores institutional misogyny in the FBI and how Clarice Starling is forced to navigate a lot of hurdles that her male colleagues don't. Indeed, the movie piqued my interest enough that I bought the kindle book and audible audiobook and read along with the narrator to see if this theme was explored in more depth in the novel.

Twenty-four hours later, I'm still not sure how to rate this book. I found it entertaining to read/listen to. The novel is well-written from a purely technical perspective, though the occasional jumps to present tense when talking about people from Starling's past were sometimes disconcerting for me, since I'm less used to that style of writing. (Example: "Jimmy Price *is* a supervisor in Latent Prints at the Washington lab. Starling *did* time with him as a Forensic Fellow." [emphasis mine]) In some ways, the novel reminds me of the parts I liked in Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, and the way the author could use otherwise "mundane" details to make the story feel vivid and immediate.

Also like Steig Larsson's trilogy, I feel like this book is trying to be an ally to women, and seeks to make some good feminist points...but I'm not sure how well it succeeds. I like protagonist Clarice Starling and I love her roommate Ardelia Mapp, and their conversations are some of the best in the novel. There's a lot of institutionalized misogyny that Clarice is forced to navigate around, just like in the movie, and quite a bit of this is handled reasonably well. There's a good conversation with Hannibal Lector about how society mistakes rage for lust, which I thought was a good dismantling of a lot of false "rape is a compliment" narratives. And I deeply appreciate the point made later in the novel when Clarice notes the incongruity in a case where all the victims are women, and yet NONE of the investigators are. That is a very crucial point that needs to be hammered home, and Harris does a good job of it.

On the other hand, the level of issues in this novel for female bodies that happen to be fat just about took my breath away, and it can't all be laid at the doorstep of the misogynistic serial killer. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when Starling came to the conclusion that the serial killer would have been *forced* to stalk his victims (as opposed to kidnapping them opportunistically) because tall, fat women "aren't common" and that if he'd just staked out a location waiting for one to walk by then he "could sit for days and not see one." Because us tall, fat women are like invisible pink unicorns! And our invisibility is an objective fact and not a matter of people only noticing the people they subjectively prefer to focus on.

Additionally, the author can't seem to decide what level of "sisterhood" he wants to push as part of the narrative. It's a very good point that a case with all-women victims deserves to have women investigators on the team. And Starling may well be correct when she claims that she "can walk in a woman's room and know three times as much about her as a man would know", although I would say that statement is an over-generalization that very much depends on both the woman who owns the room and the hypothetical man looking at it.

At the same time, Starling has moments where she has to push through her own rage and distaste and misplaced pity: anger at women who were born into more money than she; distaste for women with fat bodies who are axiomatically "hard on [their] shoes" which are "strained into ovals"; pity on fat women who are willing to date men who aren't turned off by fat bodies. I think Harris intends these details to make Starling realistically flawed, yet even after she works through her issues, she still feels judgmental of other women, trapped in the Exceptional Woman stereotype that helps her navigate institutionalized sexism but doesn't tear it down. The overall effect muddles the intended feminist message I feel the author is trying to deliver.

I've noted elsewhere that the movie is a mess when it comes to trans* issues, and the book tries to do better. There's much firmer establishment here of the fact that the serial killer is not a trans woman and that most trans* people are not violent -- indeed, that violence is much more common among cis people. But there's still the problematic framing that trans* people are "passive", which is a blanket characterization which others trans* people into a monolith with a word which is almost never used in a positive manner. ("Passive" is rarely a compliment, in my experience.) Additionally, the assessment of why the killer is not really trans* largely boils down to "because he gave the wrong answers on the psychiatric assessments", and some of these passages in the novel end up sounding reductionist, like there's only one "right" way to be a trans* person. As with the women's issues, it feels like the narrative was TRYING to be sensitive, but missed the boat.

I want to be clear, because sometimes my reviews are misunderstood: I enjoyed this novel. I'm giving it 4-stars. I'm pleased that I bought and listened to/read it. I might read it again someday. If you don't mind the above issues and/or can turn off the parts of your brain that are bothered by them for however long it takes to read a classic thriller novel, I recommend this book as enjoyable. But at the same time, this isn't a flawless novel of perfection, and I was a little disappointed to see an author try so hard to be an ally and miss the mark in places. Though I'm glad he tried at all, I hope that future writers who are inspired by this classic will improve on these flaws.

A note on the audiobook for this novel: I purchased the unabridged recording narrated by Frank Muller through Audible. Muller does a good job on the narration, but there's a persistent white noise hum in the background that I managed to tune out *except* when there was complete silence between chapters, at which point I noticed the soft white noise hum all over again when it started up in the next chapter -- each new chapter, I had to re-acclimate to the underlying sound, which took several sentences to get used to.

There's also a weird artifact on the track at the moment: at some points in the narration, there's "ghosting" on the track, as though there were two identical recordings of Muller's voice (a left and a right for stereo, maybe?) and one track suddenly falls a half-second behind the other, so it sounds like he's repeating himself for a moment until the voices re-sync. You can hear this at half a dozen points in the audio, including at Chapter 15 at time 3.08.49. I've reported this content error to Audible and they've been able to reproduce the error on their end, but they haven't yet fixed it as of 6/2/2013.

~ Ana Mardoll(less)

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May 16, 2013 Rachel Klibowitz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Silence of the lambs is a truly content grasping book. Chilling. Exciting. Horrific. Suspense. It rightfully earned it's place on the best book list on which I found it. It has all aspects of a realistic crime in which Thomas Harris perfectly used. The suspense in this book is insane, and I found it close to impossible to put down. The mystery in the book really keeps the reader going. Hannibal Lecter is one of the most chilling criminals in literature in all time, and I hope it stays that way....more

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May 13, 2013 Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As part of the search for a serial murderer nicknames "Buffalo Bill," FBI trainee Clarice Starling is given an assignment. She must visit a man confined to a high-security facility for the criminally insane and interview him.

That man, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a former psychiatrist with unusual tastes and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs--an unforgett

...more

As part of the search for a serial murderer nicknames "Buffalo Bill," FBI trainee Clarice Starling is given an assignment. She must visit a man confined to a high-security facility for the criminally insane and interview him.

That man, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a former psychiatrist with unusual tastes and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs--an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.

Amazon.com Review

The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, is even better than the successful movie. Like his earlier Red Dragon, the book takes us inside the world of professional criminal investigation. All the elements of a well-executed thriller are working here--driving suspense, compelling characters, inside information, publicity-hungry bureaucrats thwarting the search, and the clock ticking relentlessly down toward the death of another young woman. What enriches this well-told tale is the opportunity to live inside the minds of both the crime fighters and the criminals as each struggles in a prison of pain and seeks, sometimes violently, relief.

Clarice Starling, a precociously self-disciplined FBI trainee, is dispatched by her boss, Section Chief Jack Crawford, the FBI's most successful tracker of serial killers, to see whether she can learn anything useful from Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Lecter's a gifted psychopath whose nickname is "The Cannibal" because he likes to eat parts of his victims. Isolated by his crimes from all physical contact with the human race, he plays an enigmatic game of "Clue" with Starling, providing her with snippets of data that, if she is smart enough, will lead her to the criminal. Undaunted, she goes where the data takes her. As the tension mounts and the bureaucracy thwarts Starling at every turn, Crawford tells her, "Keep the information and freeze the feelings." Insulted, betrayed, and humiliated, Starling struggles to focus. If she can understand Lecter's final, ambiguous scrawl, she can find the killer. But can she figure it out in time? --Barbara Schlieper

From Publishers Weekly

In this thrillingly effective follow-up to Harris's masterful 1981 suspense novel Red Dragon, the heroine is new, but the villain isn't: Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the evil genius who played a small but crucial role in the earlier novel, returns, to mesmerizing effect. When a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill (he kidnaps, slays and skins young women) begins a crosscountry rampage, FBI trainee Clarice Starling tries to interview Lecter, a psychiatrist whose brilliant insights into the criminally insane are matched only by his bloodlusthe's currently imprisoned for nine murders, and would like nothing more than the chance to kill again. Lecter, a vicious gamesman, will offer clues to the murderer's pattern only in exchange for information about Clarice, analyzing her with horrible accuracy from the barest details. When Bill strikes again, the agent begins to realize that Lecter may know much more, and races against time and two twisted minds. Harris understands the crafting of literary terror as very few writers do; readers who put themselves in his good, coldblooded hands will lose sleep, and demand a sequel. 200,000 first printing; $200,000 ad/promo; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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May 09, 2013 Debaparna Das rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chick-lit-pulp-fiction

I don't exactly what I expected from the book, except that I expected a lot. I watched the movie and I loved it, but the book... For the first time in my life, I've found a book that does NOT do better than the movie. The movie is much better.
For one thing, I hated the fact that the truth is given out so much earlier in the story. I mean, what the...! And it takes Clarice Starling such a long time to really grasp it. That makes her look a little dumb.
The writing was, overall, a dry narrative tha...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Jonathan Kieran rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Once in a while I need to clear my addled brain with a midnight reach for the lovely Kindle and a "revisit" with some older title guaranteed to occupy my attention immediately. I don't want to be dragged into a book, no matter how exquisite, on such evenings. Usually, this dynamic involves tautly written narratives with minimalist-yet-evocative prose. Oh yeah: it also usually involves horror. I sleep more comfortably knowing I have faced the heart-palpitating presence of some ghastly evildoer in...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Valerie Opitz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book before the movie came out and have retread it as well as Harris's other two novels. I have never written a review so please bare with my lack of style and other deficits. I have a slightly different take on the author than I have been reading here. Thomas Harris wrote: Black Sunday, Red Dragon and Silence of The Lambs. His main characters in all three books have a common denominator, they are highly intelligent, high functioning psychotics who were severally abused and or neglec...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Kat rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction, psycho-killers, i-became-a-movie

I made the mistake of watching the movie first and expecting the book to rock just as much. Hint: it doesn't. The movie does follow the book plot line for the most part with only small variances that can be overlooked. I did end up feeling a stronger bond with Starling while reading the book due to the judgment and injustices she has to fight being a woman and not a full-fledged FBI agent, but the rest of the cast felt flat compared to her. Lecter was a bit of a disappointment due to the very cl...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Amanda Brinkmann rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of THE best books ever written in its genre. I was captivated by the lucid and vivid descriptions and building up of the characters. the growing tension that Harris creates and the detail - specifically the etomoligical information - that demonstrates the vast amount of research he must have done before writing this epic novel.

I had, before reading The Silence of the Lambs, read and researched biographies, autobiographies and information about the most prominent serial killers of our times....more

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Jan 11, 2013 Spinster rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dare I even say it? I preferred the movie. There. I said it. Something I have probably never said before.

Still, nothing wrong with the book. I have to say I liked Red Dragon a little more, but The Silence of the Lambs was very captivating as well. This time I got weirded out (in a positive way) for having a small crush on Lecter. He's an intelligent and classy mastermind, criminally insane and a complete psychopath. I mean, what's not to like, right?

The pacing was good and there were new twists...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Peyton Carter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Silence of the Lambs was the ultimate thriller. It was indeed thrilling, suspenseful, psychologically enthralling. Happily for me, there were not spontaneous sex scenes which seem to plague the world of thrillers. If you enjoy psychological thrillers, horror stories, or something so far out of this world it is practically true, read The Silence of the Lambs. I could tell that Thomas Harris knew his characters inside out as he write this and I loved that about this book. Harris made Hannibal...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the best thrillers I've ever read, perhaps the best. This book is exceptionally written and maintains suspense throughout its 400 pages.

There are many reasons why this book is so good:

1. You have two villains, instead of the usual one. Both are intriguing, frightening, inhuman.

2. Hannibal Lecter is one of the greatest villains ever created. The talks he has with the protagonist are mesmerizing.

3. Clarice Starling is a great hero, troubled and flawed, but not in any cliche manner.

4. No lov...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Nigel rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my first time rereading Silence since it was originally published back in 1989. I snagged a copy from the library and never got around buying a copy of my own. It became so ubiquitous and was so influential that I somehow never got around to it, even though I know I recommended it to lots of people at the time. Then the film came out and the whole thing went stratospheric. I didn't even see the film when it was on general release: I watched it on ferry back from France. Anyway. I was ann...more This is my first time rereading Silence since it was originally published back in 1989. I snagged a copy from the library and never got around buying a copy of my own. It became so ubiquitous and was so influential that I somehow never got around to it, even though I know I recommended it to lots of people at the time. Then the film came out and the whole thing went stratospheric. I didn't even see the film when it was on general release: I watched it on ferry back from France. Anyway. I was annoyed at Silence because of the way it turned the police procedural into almost fetishistic forensic investigation for sexycool serial killers Me, I preferred the approach in Peter Straub's Koko, released around the same time, also about a hunt for a serial killer but with nary an autopsy or fibre analysis. Though Koko was successful in its own terms, it was Silence that set its stamp on popular culture, and I was unreasonably annoyed about that.

Weird then to discover how little forensics there is in the book itself. There's one post-mortem examination, the antithesis of every pop-video fast-cut CSI montage. It deals with the body and those who examine it with humanity and respect, and the psychological profiling is fairly basic and dismissed with contempt by good old Doctor Lecter. Even his own insights turn out retrospectively to have been the result of direct knowledge of the killer rather than second-hand analysis.

What we have then, is an amazing game of cat-and-mouse between Starling and Lector. The film has inescapably stamped its imprint all over the book, but that's okay. The book and the film complement each other quite well. So Starling is Foster and Lector is Hopkins and, not insignificantly, Scott Glenn is Jack Crawford. Certainly you couldn't ask for a better cast to voice the characters in your head, and the book has a greater depth that the film can't match.

The book is also incredibly well written, rare enough in massively popular bestsellers. It's a rare author who can handle switching POVs and moving in and out of the present tense so smoothly, giving voice to the anger and pain of the victims and the agents and the crazy evil of the killer with equal assurance. Lector's escape at the book's mid-point is one of the most riveting sequences in all of suspense fiction, and the narrative dexterity when he wrong-foots the reader a few chapters later is subtle and sophisticated. Jeffrey Deaver appears to have made a career out of replicating endless variations of that sequence and that trick, so you can appreciate Harris' restraint all the more.

I suppose it's understandable that Harris turned the sequel, Hannibal into a sort of gorgeous, camp gothic romance rather than try to replicate Silence. Whatever you might think of that, this itself remains a masterpiece of the thriller genre, and though you might expect endless imitators to have diluted its effectiveness, the fact is none of them really got to the heart of what makes it work. Read it, watch the film and enjoy it all over again.(less)

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Oct 06, 2012 Tabatha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: twisted-and-demented

Seven years after Red Dragon, Thomas Harris' writing seems to have sharpened. The novel flows better than the previous one did and the style is more complex and layered than before.

There are some of the same problems faced in this novel though that Harris faced in the first.

Much is made about Clarice being a female agent. And just like Will Graham in the novel before this seems to be her special power, the preternatural gift that allows her to succeed where others haven't. It gets a bit grating...more

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Sep 30, 2012 DoctorM rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: hip-noir, favourites

Well, yes, of course. Not our first glimpse of Dr. Lecter--- he'd been introduced in "Red Dragon" (and played on screen by Brian Cox in "Manhunter"), but the first novel where he becomes a key character. I'm no particular fan of "Hannibal" (or the film version, or of "Hannibal Rising")--- Harris lost his way in trying to explain Hannibal Lecter, something which he'd seen very clearly in "Silence of the Lambs" that couldn't be done. Dr. Lecter works as a character because there is no explanation...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Arwen56 rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: romanzi

Funziona tutto decisamente meglio in questo secondo romanzo della trilogia di Hannibal Lecter. Il tenore e la struttura generale sono praticamente identici a quelli di “Red Dragon “ (Drago rosso), però Harris affina la tecnica, avvicinandosi un po’ di più ai personaggi, migliorando il ritmo narrativo e creando un’efficace contrapposizione tra Lecter e Clarice Starling, fatta di attrazione e repulsione, in grado di reggere con successo le fila della storia. Peccato non si sia fermato qui.

Riuscit...more

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The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter #2)

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