This book kept me transfixed from the moment I picked it up. The first section's epic poem lays the framework for figuring out the rest of the story, which is riveting.

I can't wait for Norfolk's next one.

This is a Very Serious Work, one that cannot be read (or summarized) quickly without doing it an injustice. A newly created, "classical" epic for the first hundred pages, it has larger than life heroes from Greek mythology fighting great, ancient battles in which the survival of a culture is at stake. King Meleager of Kalydon, the lone huntress Atalanta, her dog Aura, and her cousin Meilanion are, with sixty other hunters, trying to conquer a ferocious boar unleashed upon the country by the angry goddess Artemis. As the other hunters fall prey to jealousies, duplicities, and betrayals, these three alone face the final battle, the outcome of which is never clear.

The rest of the book tells parallel stories from three 20th century time frames, involving modern characters whose lives involve similar battles with "the boar" and what it represents. Solomon Memel, Ruth Lackner, and Jakob Feuerstein are teenage friends in Romania in 1938, when the Russians and, soon afterward, the Nazis, occupy the country, create ghettos, and bring the Holocaust. In 1952, Solomon publishes a poem, "Die Keilerjagd," in which he describes his World War II experiences with partisans in Greece, paralleling the boar hunt of the ancient heroes, as they chase a Nazi field commander through the same mountains in the war's waning days. Some years later, when Sol is 49 and a heroic icon to schoolchildren, Ruth, a successful theater figure, decides to make a film of his poem and experiences, and the accuracy of his poem and memory are challenged publicly. Sol's battles to fill the gaps in his memory and to recall uncertain events represent yet another battle with the boar.

Time is flexible here, filtered through the consciousness of Sol, as memories from all three time periods crowd his life in no particular order, and he recollects one event after another, perhaps imperfectly. Norfolk does not always dot all the I's and cross all the T's as Sol tells his story, requiring the reader to bring his/her own consciousness to the interpretation of events, and, like Sol, to keep an open mind to alternative interpretations. His concern with myths, both ancient and modern, how they are created, what they reveal about human needs, how they reflect reality, and why they are perpetuated give tremendous impact and broad scope to his several stories. The hypnotic, musical cadences and the elaborate, minutely detailed descriptions lend a weightiness appropriate to an epic. The action is intense, the themes are universal, and the scope of the author's vision seems almost limitless. This is a slow, but ultimately rewarding, reading experience, sometimes requiring the reader to fight his/her own battle with the boar.

I absolutlely loved the awesome inventiveness of this novel. And although it is tremendously complicated and difficult to read I found it very rewarding. The amazing thing that I found out only after I finished the book is that there really is a "Lempriere's dictionary"! I know absolutely nothing about the mythology that is so often referenced in the book and simply ignored it. I suspect that readers with a better classics background than mine would like it even more. Not recommended for those that need the pace of John Grisham or Tom Clancy to stay interested in a book.

The core theme is John Lempriere's work on his dictionary of proper names of the antique. I have followed his pen filling the papers from "Aaras'sus" to "..." - the surname of Juno, when presiding over marriages, enthusiastically. I have been animated to reread Ovid's "Metamorphoses". It has been wonderfull to have the ancient Greek (Roman) mythology back in Norfolk' s novel- in different times, in different shapes, the novel's characers as their actors. (Metamorphoses at all!) But instead of mythology's density and complexity within the novel, maybe it' s only an episode. You can follow another track - the historical background covering two centuries from the founding of the East-Indian Company to the dawn of the French Revolution. Be a historian ! Make a journey with coaches, on ships or just fly and settle down at the Sea of Azow, and find out why the fish are gone there ! Follow gulps, orange trees, women selling apples, ships, occean currents, weather systems (warming foehns in the Klagenfurt Basin make me think of Robert Musil ?). You can also read a geometry. Be a skillfull mathematician to construct broken circles or to understand Loui's XIV first tutor of mathematics telling him that parallel lines - parallel episodes - meet at a point infinitely distant from the observer - the reader - or more obviously in the reader's mind - in the novel. You become a vigilant, attentative reader, but sometimes you will find yourself bewithed by Norfolk.

And I have not even touched the plot!

Buy Norfolk's debut novel, read it and enrich your library.

Norfolk's first time out - LEMPRIERE'S DICTIONARY - is an amazing novel. Maybe I should say stunning, or fantastic. A wonderful blend of intrigue, history, romance, revenge, partying, and political machination combined with very well formed characters and exciting action. I could go on & on & on, but READ THIS BOOK!!!! It is a joy and a pleasure to read, and I gave some copies away as gifts one Christmas & everyone told me how much they liked it a few weeks later. THE POPE'S RHINOCEROS is uneven, but LEMPRIERE is perfectly defined & spelled, so to speak (Sorry!). Read it!

The opening pages which take the reader through the centuries of the ice age were indicative of what was to follow. The prose was compelling but very descriptive and I felt this was at the expense of narrative drive. I did not emerge from the book with a much clearer idea about what drove Niklot/Salvestro, or indeed many of the other characters in the book. While true life is often confusing, I would have welcomed a bit more "glue" holding the many different episodes together. Full marks to an earlier reviewer's dissection of the plot, much of which I missed---I don't think I'm particularly slow, and I like to be kept guessing, but not to the point where I forget which country I'm in. I skimmed the last hundred or so pages, feeling that I'd not taken adequate notes as I read it. I began to flounder in a welter of details quite early on in the process, so I'm not the best qualified judge, but the ending seemed anticlimactic. Plenty of brilliant scenes throughout the book, which was populated with a gallery of fantastic grotesques and others, and many of the scenes would have made great short stories. But ultimately the lack of narrative and construction made the book unwieldy. A pity, since the characters and their time were anyway so fascinating, and not covered so frequently these days.

Lawrence Norfolk is one of the only modern masters of language and storytelling we have, and I believe that we should not only appreciate it but praise it as well. As with his first novel "Lepmpriere's Dictionary", which was a story of strange twisting plots and a great reservoir for historical mystery, "The Pope's Rhinoceros" is only the best book to follow. It of course has its strange tangents that we, as an audience, are learning to be the style of the great author, and minor plots that boggle the mind even after the last page has been read. There are things too reminiscent of Lempriere's such as the character of Septimus whom we are so intrigued by but so uninformed about, we get a new view on this angelic character and only find that we are closer to understanding without even a new hint as to what it means. His, Norfolk's, ability to write so detailed on certain things as the way of life of a fish in the sea, a colony of rats, or the history of a river or strange occurrences on remote islands, is impeccable. To achieve through writing alone, an enchantment that will devour your reader, without even the elements of a story is not an easy task and yet Norfolk produces it in the blink of an eye, and makes it appear all too natural. I think anyone would terribly enjoy this book, and those who would not are just those who become aggrivated when a piece of work forces them to think a little. The only negative of the book that I can even fathom is that he has so few books under his belt that when you finish Lempriere's and the Pope's who will be left waiting impatienly, clawing at and climbing the walls, for his next work to be published.

Lawrence Norfolk's vivid imagination goes amok in this, his second novel. The characters are fantastic and utterly believable. His knowledge of early 16th century Europe and the religious and political strife therein make for a lovely canvas upon which this hefty tome is created.