The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco (EPUB)

Description

Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn’t recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin.There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love. A fascinating, abundant new novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Amazon.com Review The premise of Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, may strike some readers as laughably unpromising, and others as breathtakingly rich. A sixty-ish Milanese antiquarian bookseller nicknamed Yambo suffers a stroke and loses his memory of everything but the words he has read: poems, scenes from novels, miscellaneous quotations. His wife Paola fills in the bare essentials of his family history, but in order to trigger original memories, Yambo retreats alone to his ancestral home at Solara, a large country house with an improbably intact collection of family papers, books, gramophone records, and photographs. The house is a museum of Yambo’s childhood, conventiently empty of people, except of course for one old family servant with a long memory–an apt metaphor for the mind. Yambo submerges himself in these artifacts, rereading almost everything he read as a school boy, blazing a meandering, sometimes misguided, often enchanting trail of words. Flares of recognition do come, like “mysterious flames,” but these only signal that Yambo remembers something; they do not return that memory to him. It is like being handed a wrapped package, the contents of which he can only guess. Within the limitations of Yambo’s handicap and quest, Eco creates wondrous variety, wringing surprise and delight from such shamelessly hackneyed plot twists as the discovery of a hidden room. Illustrated with the cartoons, sheet music covers, and book jackets that Yambo uncovers in his search, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana can be read as a love letter to literature, a layered excavation of an Italian boyhood of the 1940s, and a sly meditation on human consciousness. Both playful and reverent, it stands with The Name of the Rose and The Island of the Day Before as among Eco’s most successful novels. –Regina Marler From Publishers Weekly When aging Italian book-dealer Yambo, hero of this engaging if somewhat bloodless novel of ideas, regains consciousness after a mysterious coma, he suffers a peculiar form of amnesia. His “public” memory of languages, everyday routines, history and literature remains intact, but his autobiographical memory of personal experiences—of his family, lovers, childhood, even his name—is gone. He can spout literary and cultural allusions on any topic, citing everything from Moby-Dick to Star Trek, but complains, “I don’t have feelings, I only have memorable sayings.” To recover his past, he repairs to his boyhood home to peruse a cache of memorabilia amassed in his youth during Mussolini’s reign and WWII, consisting of comic books, schoolbooks, Fascist propaganda, popular music, romantic novels and his own poetry about an unattainable high school beauty. The setup allows semiotician and novelist Eco (The Name of the Rose, etc.) to indulge his passion for pulp materials by reproducing such objects as movie posters, song lyrics and a graphic novella rendering the Book of Revelation as a Flash Gordon melodrama, with intriguing asides on cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind thrown in. The result has a somewhat academic feel, but it’s an absorbing exploration of how that most fundamental master-narrative, our memory, is pieced together from a bricolage of pop culture. Illus. Author tour. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine Eco, known for his philosophical musings, witty allusions, historical and literary criticism, and play with the postmodern world of signs and semiotics, writes with deep intelligence in this novel of ideas. For those who haven’t memorized Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Queen Loana is, at heart, a simple detective story. Awaking from a coma, a man seeks to recover his identity (not to become a better person, as the more clichéd version might have it, but to relive the memory of Italians who lived under Mussolini).Readers interested in literary allusions and the fine line between fantasy and reality will find Queen Loana both fun and erudite; Eco knows just as much about Fred Astaire as he does Marcel Proust. A survey of Italian pop culture of the 1930s and ‘40s, together with recollections of Piedmontese Italy and Fascism, will delight those interested in the intersection of history and literature. Yet this time Eco’s esoteric musings may have maimed the narrative. A few critics accused Eco of embracing semiotics over storytelling, of introducing narrative possibilities with no resolution, of over intellectualizing, period. Connections between Yambo’s reading and the small revelations relating to his sexual awakening, Catholic guilt, and wartime experiences fail to cohere. As a result, some reviewers saw Yambo as an abstruse, “annoying pedant” (San Francisco Chronicle). Others, noting biographical parallels between Yambo and Eco, wondered why the author chose not to write a straight memoir that came more from the heart than the brain. Despite these flaws, readers interested in following one man’s journey through his befuddled psyche will not be disappointed—as long as you’re up on your literature and pop culture.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. From Booklist *Starred Review* Eco, best known for the popular medieval murder-mystery tale The Name of the Rose (1983), continually tests himself and his devoted readers by composing, one after another, deeply cerebral novels teeming with erudition and offering plotlines into which he weaves (almost pours) learned discussions of history, religion, and philosophy. What saves his fiction from aridity and pretension, however, is his compelling storytelling and greatly sympathetic characters. His new novel, demonstrating this combination of traits to the fullest, is about a middle-aged man, an Italian rare-book dealer, who falls into a state of amnesia and must attempt to recover his memory. In other words, he seeks to relearn who “I” is. Yambo–the man’s nickname–spends several weeks in his old family home in a rural village, sorting through the accumulated artifacts of recent family history and his own childhood. Surely these comic books and illustrated children’s weeklies will prove to be a successful therapy; he desperately hopes they will prompt his memory. The novel’s literal level almost sports the pacing of a thriller as Yambo pieces his past together, and on a more metaphysical level, it addresses provocative and never outdated or irrelevant questions about the integrity of one’s identity and the irresistible attempt to estimate, while still a part of the community of the living, one’s lasting imprint on the global slate. Brad HooperCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review “An insidiously witty and provocative story” (Richard Eder Los Angeles Times)”Deeply cerebral, yet remarkably accessible…Eco delights his fans with an intellectual”s take on nostalgia..” (Bookpage)”The entertaining narrative fairly rips by. Another winner from Eco.” (Library Journal)”A head-spinning tour through the corridors of history and popular culture, and one of this sly entertainer”s liveliest yet.” (Kirkus Reviews) About the Author Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and the bestselling author of numerous novels and essays. He lives in Milan. From The Washington Post Italian novelist, scholar and all-around polymath Umberto Eco never met a byte of cultural data he didn’t like, and his new novel — or whatever this is — is no exception. Part comic book, part scholarly dissertation and part faux-memoir, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is a work of spectacular appetites and epic confusion. Books about books are enjoying a surge of popularity these days, but Eco has been working the vein for more than 20 years, since The Name of the Rose — a medieval detective novel of such monumental braininess it makes The Da Vinci Code resemble Spot the Dog — became a global blockbuster 20 years ago. Like The Name of the Rose, which far more people bought than managed to finish, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana sounds more straightforward than it actually is: Sixty-year-old Yambo Bodoni, a rare-book dealer in Milan, suffers a stroke that erases all memory of his life, while leaving untouched a vast repository of literary lines and references, virtually all that he has ever read, heard or seen in print. It’s a tantalizing premise — a human being reduced to a walking encyclopedia of cultural detritus, an uber-scholar who literally knows the world only through text. The novel’s early going is engagingly brisk, as the amnesiac Bodoni tries to step back into his marriage and career while simultaneously puzzling out the literary scraps in his head. Bodoni’s feelings of detachment give the first chapters a buoyant comic flavor, underscored by an awareness of profound loss. Learning from a friend that he was an inveterate adulterer, for instance, he wonders if he was having an affair with his beautiful assistant at the time of his stroke, but modesty prevents him from inquiring directly and prompts the mournful observation that “the best part of having loved . . . is the memory of having loved.” Even sex is new to him: When he and his wife, Paola, finally make love, he observes: “That’s not bad. Now I know why people are so fond of it.” Bodoni’s condition leads him to a country estate in Solara owned by his grandfather, who was also a book collector. There, in isolation, he pores over a vast library of his childhood materials, everything from diaries and sentimental novels to comic books and old 78 records, with the hope of reassembling an identity and uncovering the source of his literary obsessions — in particular, his extensive mental collection of images of fog and the “mysterious flame” of the book’s title. Unfortunately, this is exactly where Eco slides almost completely into theory; once Bodoni steps into his childhood attic, the novel hyperventilates, subsumed by detailed summary of everything he finds. The splashy period illustrations notwithstanding, only the most intrepid reader will hack through this undifferentiated jungle of comic book plots, song lyrics, novel encapsulations and summarized cartoons that occupy fully 200 pages of the book. Eco’s point is that Bodoni, undistracted by living memory, has become a truly postmodern figure, a pure conduit of culture. This is an interesting idea, and no doubt this section of the novel will be lovingly scrutinized by any number of graduate students of literary theory for years to come. But in terms of novelistic engagement — well, the wind goes completely out of the sails. Twenty pages would have made the point. Eco seems to know this, and the book is rescued, if belatedly, by a second stroke, which restores Bodoni’s memory but also leaves him completely incapacitated. A novel from the point of view of someone in a coma isn’t a trick most writers should try, but Eco pulls it off. After a few pages of throat clearing, the story is up and running again. Beyond lies the most accessible and engaging portion of the novel, as Bodoni’s literary obsessions crystallize around a personal history that he recounts with brio, a story of youthful love and desperate bravery in war. In a nod to Dante — and what Italian novelist doesn’t nod to Dante? — the “mysterious flame” of the novel belongs to Lila Saba, the girl Bodoni loved but never, except for one fleeting encounter, spoke to. Featuring the political contortions of Il Duce’s Italy, a sexually repressive Catholic education and a memorable escapade involving the rescue of a group of Russian deserters, this section of the novel accomplishes, with straightforward narrative clarity, what the middle passages cannot: a feeling for the way that various sources, literary and personal, build a web of meaning in the mind over a lifetime. It’s faint praise, perhaps, to say that a novel is worth the trouble, but that’s the sort of book Eco has written here. Too long by half, it nevertheless rewards the patient reader with a tale that’s both intellectually provoking and, in the end, emotionally serious. I have to say, along about page 250, in the midst of a long disquisition on Flash Gordon, he had me worried. But it’s a rare and brave writer who will hazard losing a reader’s attention like this. I’m glad I stuck it out. Reviewed by Justin Cronin Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1. The Cruelest Month”And what’s your name?” “Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue.” That is how it all began. I felt as if I had awoke from a long sleep, and yet I was still suspended in a milky gray. Or else I was not awake, but dreaming. It was a strange dream, void of images, crowded with sounds. As if I could not see, but could hear voices that were telling me what I should have been seeing. And they were telling me that I could not see anything yet, only a haziness along the canals where the landscape dissolved. Bruges, I said to myself, I was in Bruges. Had I ever been to Bruges the Dead? Where fog hovers between the towers like incense dreaming? A gray city, sad as a tombstone with chrysanthemums, where mist hangs over the façades like tapestries… My soul was wiping the streetcar windows so it could drown in the moving fog of the headlamps. Fog, my uncontaminated sister…A thick, opaque fog, which enveloped the noises and called up shapeless phantoms…Finally I came to a vast chasm and could see a colossal figure, wrapped in a shroud, its face the immaculate whiteness of snow. My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. I was chewing fog. Phantoms were passing, brushing me, melting. Distant bulbs glimmered like will-o’-the-wisps in a graveyard… Someone is walking by my side, noiselessly, as if in bare feet, walking without heels, without shoes, without sandals. A patch of fog grazes my cheek, a band of drunks is shouting down there, down by the ferry. The ferry? It is not me talking, it is the voices. The fog comes on little cat feet…There was a fog that seemed to have taken the world away. Yet every so often it was as if I had opened my eyes and were seeing flashes. I could hear voices: “Strictly speaking, Signora, it isn’t a coma….No, don’t think about flat encephalograms, for heaven’s sake….There’s reactivity….” Someone was aiming a light into my eyes, but after the light it was dark again. I could feel the puncture of a needle, somewhere. “You see, there’s withdrawal…” Maigret plunges into a fog so dense that he can’t even see where he’s stepping….The fog teems with human shapes, swarms with an intense, mysterious life. Maigret? Elementary, my dear Watson, there are ten little Indians, and the hound of the Baskervilles vanishes into the fog. The gray vapor was gradually losing its grayness of tint, the heat of the water was extreme, and its milky hue was more evident than ever…And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. I heard people talking around me, wanted to shout to let them know I was there. There was a continuous drone, as though I were being devoured by celibate machines with whetted teeth. I was in the penal colony. I felt a weight on my head, as if they had slipped the iron mask onto my face. I thought I saw sky blue lights. “There’s asymmetry of the pupillary diameters.” I had fragments of thoughts, clearly I was waking up, but I could not move. If only I could stay awake. Was I sleeping again? Hours, days, centuries? The fog was back, the voices in the fog, the voices about the fog. Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern! What language is that? I seemed to be swimming in the sea, I felt I was near the beach but was unable to reach it. No one saw me, and the tide was carrying me away again. Please tell me something, please touch me. I felt a hand on my forehead. Such relief. Another voice: “Signora, there are cases of patients who suddenly wake up and walk away under their own power.” Someone was disturbing me with an intermittent light, with the hum of a tuning fork. It was as if they had put a jar of mustard under my nose, then a clove of garlic. The earth has the odor of mushrooms. Other voices, but these from within: long laments of the steam engine, priests shapeless in the fog walking single file toward San Michele in Bosco. The sky is made of ash. Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog biting the hands of the little match girl. Chance people on the bridges to the Isle of Dogs look into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging under the brown fog…I had not thought death had undone so many. The odor of train station and soot. Another light, softer. I seem to hear, through the fog, the sound of bagpipes starting up again on the heath. Another long sleep, perhaps. Then a clearing, like being in a glass of water and anisette… He was right in front of me, though I still saw him as a shadow. My head felt muddled, as if I were waking up after having drunk too much. I think I managed to murmur something weakly, as if I were in that moment beginning to talk for the first time: “Posco reposco flagito-do they take the future infinitive? Cujus regio ejus religio…is that the Peace of Augsburg or the Defenestration of Prague?” And then: “Fog too on the Apennine stretch of the Autosole Highway, between Roncobilaccio and Barberino del Mugello…” He smiled sympathetically. “But now open your eyes all the way and try to look around. Do you know where we are?” Now I could see him better. He was wearing a white-what is it called?-coat. I looked around and was even able to move my head: the room was sober and clean, a few small pieces of pale metal furniture, and I was in bed, with a tube stuck in my arm. From the window, through the lowered blinds, came a blade of sunlight, spring on all sides shines in the air, and in the fields rejoices. I whispered: “We are…in a hospital and you…you’re a doctor. Was I sick?” “Yes, you were sick. I’ll explain later. But you’ve regained consciousness now. That’s good. I’m Dr. Gratarolo. Forgive me if I ask you some questions. How many fingers am I holding up?” “That’s a hand and those are fingers. Four of them. Are there four?” “That’s right. And what’s six times six?” “Thirty-six, of course.” Thoughts were rumbling through my head, but they came as if of their own accord. “The sum of the areas of the squares…built on the two legs…is equal to the area of the square built on the hypotenuse.” “Well done. I think that’s the Pythagorean theorem, but I got a C in math in high school…” “Pythagoras of Samos. Euclid’s elements. The desperate loneliness of parallel lines that never meet.” “Your memory seems to be in excellent condition. And by the way, what’s your name?” That is where I hesitated. And yet I did have it on the tip of my tongue. After a moment I offered the most obvious reply. “My name is Arthur Gordon Pym.” “That isn’t your name.” Of course, Pym was someone else. He did not come back again. I tried to come to terms with the doctor. “Call me…Ishmael?” “Your name is not Ishmael. Try harder.” A word. Like running into a wall. Saying Euclid or Ishmael was easy, like saying Jack and Jill went up a hill. Saying who I was, on the other hand, was like turning around and finding that wall. No, not a wall; I tried to explain. “It doesn’t feel like something solid, it’s like walking through fog.” “What’s the fog like?” he asked. “The fog on the bristling hills climbs drizzling up the sky, and down below the mistral howls and whitens the sea…What’s the fog like?” “You put me at a disadvantage-I’m only a doctor. And besides, this is April, I can’t show you any fog. Today’s the twenty-fifth of April.” April is the cruelest month.” “I’m not very well read, but I think that’s a quotation. You could say that today’s the Day of Liberation. Do you know what year this is?” “It’s definitely after the discovery of America…” “You don’t remember a date, any kind of date, before…your reawakening?” “Any date? Nineteen hundred and forty-five, end of World War Two.” “Not close enough. No, today is the twenty-fifth of April, 1991. You were born, I believe, at the end of 1931, all of which means you’re pushing sixty.” “Fifty-nine and a half. Not even.” “Your calculative faculties are in excellent shape. But you have had, how shall I say, an incident. You’ve come through it alive, and I congratulate you on that. But clearly something is still wrong. A slight case of retrograde amnesia. Not to worry, they sometimes don’t last long. But please be so kind as to answer a few more questions. Are you married?” “You tell me.” “Yes, you’re married, to an extremely likable lady named Paola, who has been by your side night and day. Just yesterday evening I insisted she go home, otherwise she would have collapsed. Now that you’re awake, I’ll call her. But I’ll have to prepare her, and before that we need to do a few more tests.” “What if I mistake her for a hat?” “Excuse me?” “There was a man who mistook his wife for a hat.” “Oh, the Sacks book. A classic case. I see you’re up on your reading. But you don’t have his problem, otherwise you’d have already mistaken me for a stove. Don’t worry, you may not recognize her, but you won’t mistake her for a hat. But back to you. Now then, your name is Giambattista Bodoni. Does that tell you anything?” Now my memory was soaring like a glider among mountains and valleys, toward a limitless horizon. “Giambattista Bodoni was a famous typographer. But I’m sure that’s not me. I could as easily be Napoleon as Bodoni.” “Why did you say Napoleon?” “Because Bodoni was from the Napoleonic era, more or less. Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Corsica, first consul, marries Josephine, becomes emperor, conquers half of Europe, loses at Waterloo, dies on St. Helena, May 5, 1821, he was as if unmoving.” “I’ll have to bring my encyclopedia next time, but from what I remember, your memory is good. Except you don’t remember who you are.” “Is that serious?” “To be honest, it’s not so good. But you aren’t the first person something like this has happened to, and we’ll get through it.” Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐For those who are used to battling through Mr. Eco’s usual brainbusting work, or having to take notes to keep things straight, here’s a book more from the man’s heart, more so than any book he has yet written. Other’s give a good synopsis of the story, so I’ll simply throw in my two sense on whether or not to read this book. I enjoyed the trip into Mr. Eco’s childhood Italy, as this is undoubtedly his most sutobiograpgical work to date and much takes place in the period when he would have been in his youth that the protagonist is journeying into during dreamstates after a stroke. Always an excellent historian, Mr. Eco has created a scrapbook of sorts to show us exactly what the character is describing and goes on to explain how each item or group of items affected his life or effected his life or change in life. This is NOT a Mystery, nor is is it the type of story we are used to from Eco, although the voice is undoubtedly his, and recognizable to readers of his other works. Yet, it is simultaneously an altogether different story, more a tour of his heart and how a person grows into the adult they are via the collection of experiences they amass in child and young adulthood. what I found interesting, is not only all the comic book covers, movie posters, political war posters, (and some excellent examples of the visual arts from that WWII period of Italy and Il Duce), and the way he not only brings that period alive for the reader, but how in the end, he ties some of these disparate memories together into a new whole, quite metaphorical for the journey we all take into becoming the person we ultimately become, and how memories morph and change as we age, morph and change ourselves. Yet there are also special memories that are so embedded as to NEVER change and that these can create the strongest base of our personality. It is a fluid and easier read in comparison to most of his other works. I was struck, too, that being an American who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, how different and yet how similar the formative years are the world over and throughout time. you can taste and smell the Italian countryside and the food or wine he describes and see the characters from WWII Italy in their tattered, worn clothes as well as the things and activities they used to get themselves through from one day to the next.There is one particular wartime adventure in which he takes part where his childhood activities had been a wonderful preparation for him to “become a man”, almost like “an Italian WWII Bar Mitzvah”. I won’t ruin the experience for people yet to read it by telling it here. But life is here in 3D, the wonderings, (and the wanderings!), the building of an intellect, a view of the world around him, and even comments on his sexual awakenings and how in Europe, while Mistresses are tolerated on so many levels, the actual sexual education and the initial amazing experience of feeling the opposite sex for the first time, dreaming of a first kiss, and then the reality fulfilling, or not, that dream, in all its initial innocence and trepidation are explored. For a man I’m used to getting intricate historical or philosphical novels from, (if usually tinged with a “wink-wink sense of humour” if you’re not too tired to catch it), this book comes straight from the man’s heart and it shows in the different style and the ease of the read in comparison to his other books. He’s always been adept as describing things and people or setting a scene over which to play some action of a philosophical, or moral, question. But this story seemed to flow more naturally from his pen, perhaps because it is such a personal story. It is simply a different kind of read that you walk into an U Eco book expecting to read. At first, I was a little dissapointed, and then, once I understood what part all the scrapbooked sections played in the story, I fell right into it and went on a little trip to Italy in the time of Il Duce. Definitely an interesting book by and of itself. But if you are a fan, I believe its even more interesting as I felt that some of what I learned here, whether truly autobiographical or not, gave me a little window to better inform me about the author as I read his other books. That said, I know this book is not for everyone. It is not a Beach Towel summer confection, nor is it a Dan Brown mystery. But its the closest we’re probably going to get from Mr. Eco to that easier style of read. I’ll take what I can get as I’m already a fan of his other books, even if I’ve had to start them a few times before I got all the way through. This book I read on three successive nights, and I enjoyed each one.

⭐Have you ever wanted to listen to someone’s every thought? Neither have I. But that’s what Eco gives us in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. A strange and mysterious title that promises some fascinating discovery. Instead we partake in a man’s journey to rediscover his past and nothing else. Our protagonist nicknamed “Yambo” (what an ugly nickname) suffered some “incident” as a result of which he has lost part of his memory, namely that part that pertains to his emotional subjective life. He has retained however his objective downright encyclopedic memory of the world. He doesn’t connect with anything the he’s supposed to have feelings for, but his mind spews out expanded definitions, poems in various languages, literature, song lyrics, prayers, etc. He works as an antique book dealer, which could lead to exciting esoteric business, but it doesn’t.To reconnect and hopefully regain his emotional memory he travels to his summer vacation home, which was also used as such during his childhood. There he finds books, magazines, records, and assorted junk from his parents and grandparents. That’s what the largest section of this book “Paper Memories” deals with. An apt title for this dreadful section where Yambo goes through each box takes out every item and describes it. When you hope it will come to an end, he discovers a secret chapel (!) in his house, and more rooms with more boxes of course. And just as you think he’s running out of boxes, there’s another one, and another one… Yambo, too, struggles with the name of the rose, I mean, the name of the girl of his first infatuation, and more importantly, he can’t remember her face. Eventually he does what any reasonable person would have done from the beginning, ask his childhood friend. Finally, he finds a valuable book which mercifully puts and end to the lame paper memories.But that book also puts him back in the hospital again. And this time around, Yambo’s life comes back to him, chronologically; nothing significant but some dull episodes of discovery, war, fascism. And to make sure there’s no real action going on, Eco, puts his character in some vegetative state, where all he has is his past to occupy him- again. It’s like re-reading the previous section but from the first person perspective, while “Paper Memories” was written from the perspective of an unconnected observer.Around 100 pages before the end, finally we get another voice. Yambo recalls an episode during the war where he meets some guy who asks him for help in rescuing some resistance guys before the Germans get them. The little Yambo performs his mission heroically and it also confronts him for the first time with death. Here we finally get some interesting philosophical bits about religion.I got this book when it first came out, but put it aside after reading the first chapter. This time around, years later, I forced myself to read it in the hopes it would be worthwhile after all. It wasn’t. I ended up glancing over paragraphs, my eyes looking for any hint that something interesting would happen.A man endowed with a remarkable memory like Eco writing about a man with no memory is of course ironic but it could also be Eco’s journey of trying to discover the mystery behind his memory. As the sources of the images provided in this book point out, Eco is also a hoarder of old stuff. So I think we are allowed to draw parallels between Yambo and Eco. And this book is a typical circumspect way of Eco telling us about his youth, a veiled autobiography of mostly irrelevant events. Unfortunately, Yambo isn’t nearly as interesting as Eco. And that is a terrible weakness in a book- to give us a main character for which the reader can’t care. Another weakness is that this book tells nothing but what goes on in Yambo’s head. How can anyone without memory not want to discover himself through the world and re-discover things about the world and others he has forgotten. Not Yambo, he isolates himself and us in his past, which isn’t remotely interesting or entertaining. But more than anything this is a book were Eco also breaks with his past as a writer. No more excitement, no more fascinating adventures, no more fantastic events, no more esotericism, no more play with languages, no more humor. Although there was plenty of opportunity to turn this book into a page-turner, Eco avoids it. At least he could have given us some interesting cooking recipes from the 20s and 30s. Instead we get a lot of tedious thought processes that go nowhere. Such as Yambo rehearsing all sorts of imaginary scenarios of him and his beautiful assistant. He’s been told he’s a ladies man and that he cheats on his loving wife, so he speculates endlessly about how he could have gotten involved with the girl. For every piece of junk he finds in a box, his mind concocts hypothesis of who used it and how it was used. He speculates endlessly about how this or that may have affected him in his childhood.Sure, even this book retains some of Eco’s charm, but just some of it. And it is endearing to read about a main character in a coma and reaching the unavoidable. Unfortunately, there’s so few ideas, so little abstract thought, almost nothing to learn here, but the names of stuff that mattered to Eco decades ago.

⭐I am not sure, particularly about the ending. I know it inspired me to look up a book I treasured in childhood. In this age it was easy and I could easily get a new copy. The day it came I read it to my grandson who was as fascinated by it as I once was.

⭐I have enjoyed reading all of Umberto Eco’s books because of his high quality of writing. I fall deeply into the world that he creates in each story. In The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, that world seems to be quite personal. It is a detailed world of an Italian man re-learning his boyhood of around the time of World War II, when he was exposed to all popular literature and music of the time as well as some lesser known productions. Eco’s verbose details of that era and environment are so lengthy that I (dare I say) skipped a few pages. Am I getting impatient in my old age? I did not feel that I missed any development of the story or the characters–only some more examples of the writings and music. I look forward to his next book, which I expect won’t delve so deeply (and for so long) into an area of such personal connection for him.

⭐A good soul searching look at growing up in fascist Italy and the second world war. I enjoyed the evocative descriptions of events and places. I don’t know whether the premise was successful (the amnesiac regaining his identity through the haze of childhood memories) but the images of life in rural Italy during tumultuous times was pleasing enough.

⭐Very good

⭐Awesome!

⭐Eco nimmt in dieses buch uns mit in seine Kindheit, die Comics und Abenteuerromane den er als Kind so geliebt hat. Es erzählt über das Aufwachsen in das Faschistische Italien unter Benito Mussolini. Es vermischt autobiografische Erinnerungen mit einen Roman über eine Mann der auf der suche ist nach sich selbst nachdem er bei einen Gehirnblutung Große teilen seines Gedächtnis und Erinnerungen verloren hat. Ein Ruhrendes buch. Einer seine mehr zugangliche Romane, aber sicher nicht schlechter dadurch.SpoilerAls Giambattista Bodoni im Krankenhaus aufwacht, hat er alle Erinnerungen an sich selbst, seine Frau, seine Kinder und seine Geliebten verloren. Nur seine Erinnerungen an Bücher und Kleinigkeiten scheinen intakt zu sein. Nach seiner Entlassung und nachdem er sein Antiquariat in den sicheren Händen der polnischen Sibilla gelassen hat, geht er auf Drängen seiner Frau in die Villa seines Großvaters in Solara. Yambo verbrachte einen Teil seiner Jugend dort, vor, während und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Auf dem Dachboden des Herrenhauses versucht er mit Hilfe von Büchern, Zeitschriften und anderen Dokumenten aus seiner Jugend, seine Vergangenheit zu rekonstruieren.Ich bin ein Großer fan von Eco, sehr schade das nichts neues mehr kommen wird.

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