The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
by Umberto Eco
(Audio)
This was a fascinating book. It's not one I would have read if JudySlump hadn't sent it to me with her high recommendation, but it's one I'm glad to have read. I have several other Eco books on my To Be Read shelf.
I am intrigued by the basic concept, a man who has lost his personal memory but retains knowledge of ever book, song, movie, and story he's ever encountered. For a normal person, this would probably be maddening or overwhelming at the least. But Yambo takes a very logical approach to the problem. As a dealer of rare books, he attempts to find himself through the only thing he can remember--words. The attempt is long and detailed; sometimes I found it incredibly boring in detail. Other times, it was incredibly fascinating. I kept waiting for the memories to come flooding back to him, so that I could get a glimpse at what he lost and then found. And while there is insight, it took a long longer than I thought it would to get there.
I did enjoy the journey, for the most part. In having no personal memory, things I take for granted are thing he experiences for the first time--tasting chocolate, experiencing the brightness of the sun, waking up. The descriptions I found most interesting were ones I could relate to. There were a lot of pieces of literature and art I knew, but also quite a few I didn't. I was thrilled when he began speaking of Phantomas. I've never read those crime/mysteries, but there's a painting in the National Gallery of Art I came across while doing the BookCrossing 2011 Convention Museum Scavenger Hunt that is inspired by Phantomas. So it was exciting and fitting to hear more about the character within a book that came to me through BookCrossing.
I didn't know so much about Italy's involvement in World War II. So it was interesting to get a look at that through the notes and propaganda a young boy in Italy was exposed to. It was the lengthy dive into politics that started to bore me, though, as things strayed from well-known literature. The songs and music were clever, but I just don't think I had enough of a historical background to find the heavier passages accessible.
I also felt like the elusive first love that he sought during the second half of the story was almost completely absent from the beginning. It's like an obsession that seemed to come out of nowhere for me. And for it to have so much significance to the plot, that seemed strange and unbalanced. I wonder if any subtle hints to it, perhaps in relation to his assistant, were lost in translation? Otherwise, I felt like the narrative was steady and the translation quite beautiful at times. Earreading it was certainly pleasant, as the reader's accent was marvelous, flawlessly mastering English, French, Italian, and maybe something else I missed along the way.
Oh, I should also say that I had absolutely no idea so many references to fog existed. That was a nice constant throughout.
The ending surprised me and left me wondering. But the brilliant part of his struggle is that it's been described and translated into words. There is a beautiful symmetry in this. He rebuilds his mind through words and, in the end, that's what he is to us, readers--something we can remember reading, something that moved us, something that made us think.