I Am in an Umberto Eco Mood - Review of "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana"

Ever the didactic professor - even when wielding the novelist's pen - Umberto Eco explores how memory serves to lead us out the the metaphysical fog that often enshrouds us. "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." Eco manages to take this plot device and weave a tale that is a very personal recollection of what it must have been like for him to grow up in the Italy of World War II. Political intrigue often emerges from Yambo's fog-bound memory as images from his childhood trigger nostalgic excursions through the past.

Hovering over the entire enterprise is Yambo's unrequited love for the unattainable object of a high school crush - Lili, the memory of whose face he struggles to recalls as he lies dying in a comatose state. An initial cerebral incident had left him bereft of personal memories. Back home in his ancestral home of Solara, he slowly regains a sense of perspective and history through the books, records, movie posters and comic books he discovered sequestered throughout the villa. His final discovery of a priceless original Shakespeare folio triggers his ultimate cerebral vascular accident. The final chapters take the reader inside the mind of the dying Yambo as he speeds through a dizzying kaleidoscope of real and imagined images - all the while groping for the elusive image of Lili's face. These final chapters - and Yambo's final apocalyptic thoughts and memories - are presented (in typical Eco style) as a parody of the Book of Revelation.

The novel is a moving and irreverent conceit in which Eco opens the kimona and shows us not only his special mind but also his complex heart.

Enjoy "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana."

Al

Another Masterpiece by Umberto Eco: Review of "The Prague Cemetery"

Umberto Eco is a professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologne, and a brilliant novelist and essayist. I consider myself to be reasonably well-educated, but I must confess that I needed to look up "semiotics" to fully understand what this academic discipline is all about. In brief, it is a branch of philosophy/logic that examines how we use symbols and signs to create order and meaning - in our own minds and in our communication with others. Learning that truth helped me to see Eco's novels in a new light; he explores the manifold uses of symbolism in a unique way in each of his works of fiction

In the "The Prague Cemetery," he offers up a broadly drawn satire that pokes fun at all kinds of racism and prejudices. He also demonstrates our propensity to make order of the world by making lists; he seasons almost each page with some sort of list - often a list of ingredients that his gastronomic characters have ingested at a sumptuous Paris eatery.

In this latest novel, he limns a strange tale that weaves together historical characters, like Sigmund Freud, Garibaldi, Napoleon III, operating in fictitious relationships and dialogues. He illuminates in harsh spotlights historical conspiracy theories that have the Freemasons, the Jesuits, the Jews conspiring - sometimes separately and at other times in combination - to rule the world. The historical contexts include a once-in-a-century secret meeting of rabbis in a Prague cemetery, and the long struggle to unite the various segments of Italy into a united nation.

The story is told through the dual voices of a multiple personality protagonist. Eco's way of thinking and writing may be an acquired taste, but I have acquired the taste with great gusto.

Enjoy!

Al