I absolutely loved this book because it's a great combination of three things I really enjoy: history, clever postmodernism and Sherlock Holmes. There has been so much said about this novel that I'm sure I have no new insights, I can only say that it was really intellectually challenging and stimulating, and combined a huge variety of themes, theories and ideas with a really exciting and creative plot. The only objection I have is that Eco provides too much background history of the various sects, popes, emperors, theological debates and church politics. I continually got tangled up in who the various popes were at various times, why they were opposed to certain sects, etc. But this might be my fault, since reading too many modernist novels has taught me to be somewhat cavalier about plot. But overall, so incredibly enjoyable, the knowledge that Eco displays is staggering and the philosophical richness is almost overwhelming. I loved how Eco writes in the Prologue 'I am comforted and consoled in finding [the story] immeasurably remote in time (now that the waking of reason has dispelled all the monsters that its sleep has generated), gloriously lacking in any relevance for our day, atemporally alien to our hopes and our certainties' and then proceeds to prove the exact opposite. I also really enjoyed the movement of the text from moments of high excitement (and even farce at times as the monks keep tripping over their robes) to very dense, profound philosophical discussions, which gives the whole book a really interesting and varied pace.
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