I'm going to be honest with you. I've been teaching Eco's The Name of the Rose in my AP Lit class for maybe fifteen years now, and every single time a student asks why we can't just watch the Sean Connery movie instead, a small part of my soul leaves my body. But here's the thing—I'd never actually listened to the audiobook. I'd read it three times, marked it up with enough marginalia to qualify as a secondary text, but never heard it.
Twenty-one hours later, I'm a convert. And also slightly behind on grading. (Sorry, third period. Your essays on The Great Gatsby will have to wait.)
When Aristotle Meets Murder in a Monastic Library
This is what Hemingway would have called a "true" book—not in the factual sense, but in the way it understands something fundamental about human nature. Eco was a semiotician, which is a fancy way of saying he studied how meaning works, and you feel that in every page. Brother William of Baskerville isn't just solving murders. He's reading signs. Decoding the world. It's Sherlock Holmes if Holmes had been a Franciscan friar with a deep appreciation for Roger Bacon and a healthy skepticism about papal authority.
The year is 1327. The abbey is wealthy, labyrinthine, and absolutely stuffed with secrets. Seven deaths in seven days. A forbidden library that operates like a maze. Monks hiding everything from heretical texts to, well, I won't spoil it. But let's just say Eco understood that the scariest thing in a monastery isn't demons—it's ideas.
My students would absolutely hate the pacing. I loved it.
Eco doesn't rush. He lets you marinate in the fourteenth century—the superstitions, the theological debates, the way knowledge itself was treated as dangerous. There are passages about the nature of laughter, about whether Christ ever laughed, that sound like they should be boring but somehow aren't. The prose deserves to be savored. This is why we still read the classics, honestly. Because a book written in 1980 about events in 1327 can still make you think about truth and power and what we're willing to kill to protect.
Three Narrators Walk Into an Abbey
Okay, so here's where it gets interesting. This version uses three narrators—Neville Jason, Nicholas Rowe, and Sean Barrett—and I'll admit I was skeptical at first. Multiple narrators can go wrong fast. Like when you're listening to a thriller and suddenly the voice changes and you spend ten minutes confused about who's speaking.
But it works here. Mostly.
Neville Jason handles the bulk of the narration, and his voice is perfect for Brother William—measured, intelligent, with just enough warmth to make you understand why young Adso follows him so devotedly. He does this thing with pauses that I genuinely appreciated. The narrator understands that pause is punctuation. He's not rushing through Eco's dense philosophical passages; he's letting them breathe.
Some reviewers have mentioned the pacing feels slow, and—yeah, fair. If you're used to listening at 1.5x or 2x speed, this might test your patience. But I'm firmly in the 1.0x camp (the author chose those words, people), and at that speed, it's contemplative rather than draggy. Worth pausing the faculty meeting for. (Principal Martinez, if you're reading this—that was the budget meeting. I was definitely paying attention. I wasn't.)
The transitions between narrators can occasionally feel a bit disjointed. Not jarring exactly, but noticeable. A minor complaint in a twenty-one hour experience, though.
This One's Not for the Casual Listener
Let me be real: if you want something to half-pay-attention-to while doing dishes, keep scrolling. The Name of the Rose demands engagement. It's dense. It's philosophical. There are extended passages in Latin. (Eco was showing off. I respect it.)
But if you loved The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, or if The Shadow of the Wind is your thing, this is their spiritual ancestor. Homegoing works in a similar way—sprawling, ambitious, trusting you to follow complex threads across time. It's literary historical fiction that treats its readers like intelligent adults. A mystery where the real puzzle isn't just who did it, but why knowledge itself is worth dying for.
Skip this if: you need plot momentum to stay engaged, or if medieval theological debates sound like homework. Queue it up if: you want a mystery that's really a meditation on truth, interpretation, and the dangerous power of ideas.
I listened to most of this on my morning walks along the lakefront. Denise kept asking why I was muttering about Aquinas at 6 AM. The answer is that Eco gets into your head. You start thinking in syllogisms. You start wondering what books you'd kill to protect.
(None, obviously. Probably. Well—maybe my first edition Ulysses. Don't test me.)
The 1986 film is fine, by the way. Sean Connery is charming. But it's a sketch compared to the novel. And the 2019 TV series with John Turturro? Actually pretty good, though it takes liberties. Neither captures what Eco was really doing, which was writing a meditation on interpretation disguised as a murder mystery.
Class Dismissed
Twenty-one hours is a commitment. But some books earn their length. This one does.
