The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

by Umberto Eco

Nocover-blank-133x176

The Mysterious Flame of Q...

by
Umberto Eco

published

December 2005 by Recorded Books

edit

binding

Audio Cassette

isbn

1419344684 (isbn13: 9781419344688)

description

The premise of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, may strike some readers as laughably unpromising, and others as breathtakingl...more

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | compare prices ...

Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.

discuss this book

topics	replies	views	last activity
Clock-Watchers: In the B&N Bargain Bin	14	20	10/11/2008 08:15PM
What a Story	2	13	04/22/2008 04:44PM

new topic

groups with this book

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1632)

All ratings | 5 stars (132) | 4 stars (297) | 3 stars (345) | 2 stars (163) | 1 star (67) | avg 3.28

all | this edition

April

April rated it:

(review of isbn 0151011400)

11/30/07

Read in November, 2007

I read every 449 pages of this book... and feel like I wasted a lot of time. This book needs SO MUCH editing. The premise and some of the ideas presented had great potential for a very interesting story, however it fails in almost every way. There is no characterization, the story barely moves from page 1 to page 449, and there are many story lines which are left unfinished. 90% of the book is tedious description of dated material such as books, records, photographs, etc. which are suppose to...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

Joanne

Joanne rated it:

(review of isbn 0099481375)

05/08/07

Read in May, 2007

I expected a lot from this book when I bought it, and I have to say that I was quite dissappointed.

I liked the lead character a lot, and the offset for the plot was excellent, but it seemed to me that he (Eco)didn't play around enough with all the possibilities which his character's situation allowed.
At Solara, the idea of trying to recover his history by surrounding himself with his childhood things was very appealing to me, but at some point I got sick of rummaging through old vinyl dis...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

kt rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

08/27/08

Read in January, 2006

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I was very excited for an Eco novel that would concentrate on old pulp fiction, but my interest dwindled about a third of the way through, only to be rekindled in the last 15 pages.

The narrator, Yambo, suffers a stroke and upon awaking has lost all his memories except of what he has read-- which is quite a bit, as he is a rare bookseller. He has a mind entirely made up of "paper memories" and nothing else. For an amnesiac stroke victim who cannot even remember ever brushing his te...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Sara

Sara rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

08/22/08

Read in August, 2008

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana tells of an antiquarian book dealer who has suffered a stroke and lost all memory of the people in and events of his life. At the novel's outset, the protagonist, Yambo, begins the daunting work of trying to reinsert himself into the life he has forgotten. He finds that he does not recognize his family or closest friends, but can still appraise a 17th-century work of natural history. His only sparks of memory relate to books he has read. These come back to...more The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana tells of an antiquarian book dealer who has suffered a stroke and lost all memory of the people in and events of his life. At the novel's outset, the protagonist, Yambo, begins the daunting work of trying to reinsert himself into the life he has forgotten. He finds that he does not recognize his family or closest friends, but can still appraise a 17th-century work of natural history. His only sparks of memory relate to books he has read. These come back to him in snippets. Names, quotations, plotlines. Yambo laments to his wife that his memory is made of paper. In an attempt to reconnect with any memories of real people or actual events, he takes a solitary trip back to his childhood home in a rustic town called Solara. At Solara, Yambo finds more books.

The majority of The Mysterious Flame describes these books and how, poring over them at 60, Yambo imagines what he must have taken from them as a child. This central portion of The Mysterious Flame, the meat of the novel, is filled with images from the books, magazines and comics Yambo finds, which is a wonderful boon to Eco's readers in following Yambo's mental journey. Performing this task of self-rediscovery, Yambo concocts an elaborate method of reference and cross-reference to try and reclaim memories of himself at 7, at 10, at 13. For example, as he reads a comic book from his 6th grade year, he plays music that would have been current, looks at newspapers from the period to give himself context of world events at that time, tracks down his school notebooks to retrieve what he may have thought when he read this book or that.

The more Yambo reads, however, the farther his pre-stroke memory retreats. With every book he encounters, he creates a new memory of himself as a child interpreted by himself as an old man, but without actually remembering that childhood as he lived it. Is knowing what he read as a child enough to infer who he was or who he became? Yambo's struggles to connect ink on pages to the living boy he once was accentuate the edifice of memory and the extent to which we interpret and meticulously craft even a "genuine" memory. As we follow Yambo's efforts, Eco invites us to consider the connection between what we read, what we think and who we are, between lived experience and read experience, between knowledge gleaned in the world and knowledge gleaned through the written word. It brings to my mind a pet metaphor of medieval monks, which compares reading to eating. To read is to consume a whole, digest it, and to absorb its nutrients. If you are what you eat, as they say, then to the medieval scholar you are, literally, what you read. What one reads becomes one's identity insofar as it crafts one's thoughts and helps determine one's actions. This view of identity as thought does not conform neatly with current fixations on identity as deed, but as with so much from the Middle Ages, I think we benefit from entertaining such ideas and I was tickled, if not surprised, to discover them floating around in a work by Eco, a consummate medievalist by temperament if not by trade.

I will not here reveal the final issue of Yambo's labors because whether or not he recovers his memory constitutes the point of tension upon which the plot relies for its momentum. I had intended to address my single criticism of this novel, but it seems wiser now to glance over it if not swallow it completely. It pertains to Yambo's adolescent view of women, and one woman in particular, a view I found discordant with the otherwise rather acute emotional as well as academic intelligence of the character. Would a man so obsessed with the mind really carry a lifelong torch for a boyhood crush based solely on appearance? But none of us is consistent, so perhaps this is no criticism at all, and merely an observation of what I found unlikable about Eco's protagonist. When I remember reading this book and what I took from it, this will probably be a detail I will selectively omit, crafting my memory willfully, so that I recall only my enjoyment of the book, which was considerable.
...less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Sarah

Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

04/08/08

Read in April, 2008

I'll admit that I was initially drawn to this book because of the great pictures - reproductions of pop culture media from the 30s and 40s. I have liked previous books by Eco as much for their interesting plots as for their philosophical ruminations. Unfortunately, this book was really short on an interesting story line and seemed to be purely a vehicle for Eco to riff on the themes of memory, identity, childhood in wartime Italy, and whatever else occurred to him.

The first section of th...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Amy

Amy rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

11/21/07

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: those who use books as landmarks

I remember what the word "giraffe" looked like in the last chapter of Fun With Dick & Jane, where it sat on the page beneath the campy illustration of school kids at the zoo. I remember that I read Black Beauty curled up in a corner of my aunt and uncle's living room in Connecticut, feeling homesick and out of place, and that I bought The Unbearable Lightness of Being in a train station in England and read it straight through on the plane from London to Orlando. The lights were off...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Samantha

Samantha rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

12/19/07

bookshelves: love-it

Read in December, 2007

This is the first book that I did not completely mangle in my comings and goings from work. The pages are still crisp and the cover has not fallen off. I consider this an accomplishment, because for me, the sign of a good book is one that is beaten up and dog-eared. I LOVED this novel. It is the first Umberto Eco book that I have read and it was a delight to read.
The main character, a very loveable Italian gentleman named Yambo awakens from a stroke to find that his personal memory bank has be...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Dimitri

Dimitri rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

06/14/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2007

Umberto Eco is always prone to uncontrollable wordiness but the reader is usually compensated by the fascinated plot, complex characters, and general atmoshpere of his books. It is also generally the case that when Eco goes off in a tangent, it is to show off his knowledge in history and symbolism which personally I find interesting.

This books is an exception. It preserves the charactistic verbosity of the author bu the plot fails to become gripping or evolve in any significant direction. Al...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Lavina

Lavina rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

04/15/07

bookshelves: 2007, fiction, translation

Read in April, 2007

I was about 150 pages into the book when I started feeling the way you feel when you're looking through stacks of photo albums with someone you don't really know, who's telling you very detailed stories about people you've never met and places you've never been -- people and places to whom you have no connection.

In the end, the concept of the book (which is what drew me to it in the first place) was what made it weak. People are interesting because of their experiences, their memories of the...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Chris

Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

08/28/07

bookshelves: thissummer

Read in June, 2007

First of all, I like Umberto, and I think he's an intellectual superstar.
But I don't think he's a great novelist, and this book is why. This book was trying to swallow an enormous amount of philosophical pondering that is only barely sugar-coated by narrative. Really hard to take in, worst was the 50 pages of random literary and philosophical associations littering the beginning of the book.
The only reason this gets 2 stars is I liked all the historical anecdotes from Italy in the 40's and...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comments

Jenny

Jenny rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

04/24/07

Read in December, 2006

A bookseller wakes from a coma with no memory of his life, and the only frame of reference he has for any conversations are direct quotations from books he has read. He journeys to the home he used to spend summers in to try to uncover the truth about his past.

While an interesting premise, this book has major tedious moments. Anyone with an interest in obscure Italian fascist literature should read this. He includes entire songs, book covers, and comic books that the main character encounter...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Mike

Mike rated it:

(review of isbn 0151011400)

09/22/07

Read in September, 2007

I've really liked some of Eco's books and haven't been able to finish others. This is the first of his history-heavy books that I've read that draws on 20th century history (here, mainly Italy during the war), rather than the more distant past. His writing is amazing as always, but for my taste I still find that he wanders a bit too much through long lists of names, songs, whatever, that can distract from the story. The underlying story here was good, but the book probably could have been a t...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

erin

erin rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

03/21/07

bookshelves: currently-reading

recommends it for: calling all literary and language buffs

Three stars so far... I've just started this but thus far Eco's wit and unbelievable intellect are present as usual. A middle-aged man, a seller of antique and rare books, awakes from a coma to discover he has no memory of his life, family or even some basic actions -- but he can recall every line he's ever read and communicates through these strings of memory. It is charming, and every once in awhile you recognize the lines our character quotes and you feel ever-so-smart.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Kate

Kate rated it:

(review of isbn 0151011400)

07/28/07

bookshelves: meta, own-currently

Read in January, 2006

This book really disappointed in the end, after giving a fairly fascinating glimpse of the culture of an Italian childhood under Fascism. I was enjoying the plot and then suddenly it ends in this inexplicable way, as if Eco suddenly got horribly sick of writing the thing. I'm keeping it for the gorgeous color reproductions.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

Fernanda

Fernanda rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

04/15/08

É Umberto Eco - o que quer dizer milhares de referências, do pop ao erudito. Pra mim, preciosas foram as análises da escondida censura à mídia do regime fascista nos jornais e até histórias em quadrinhos.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comments

Timothy

Timothy rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

11/05/08

Read in November, 2008

Eco organizes The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana around a single storyline. Following an undescribed accident, Yambo loses all autobiographical memory. He is told about his past from family and friends, but their information does nothing to trigger his memory. Yambo is left with perplexing existential questions. He does not know “why he is who he is.” He does not recall the events and influences that led him to become the person described by friends and family. The Mysterious Flame is about...more Eco organizes The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana around a single storyline. Following an undescribed accident, Yambo loses all autobiographical memory. He is told about his past from family and friends, but their information does nothing to trigger his memory. Yambo is left with perplexing existential questions. He does not know “why he is who he is.” He does not recall the events and influences that led him to become the person described by friends and family. The Mysterious Flame is about Yambo’s efforts to identify these influences.

Here lies what I believe is the most interesting aspect of the book. It seems to me that Eco created a storyline to support an idea that he wanted to explore: how do life events guide the popular media we seek out, and how do these media shape our understanding of the world. This idea seems consistent with Eco’s training as a semiotician. To connect this idea to the storyline, Eco has Yambo travel to a childhood home and rummage through his belongings. Much of the book is devoted to Yambo’s rediscovery of books and records that he was introduced to while growing up (complete with illustrations, a unique aspect of the novel). Yambo ponders the influence these media had on him, and how they relate to his personal characteristics. In the final section of the book, Yambo regains memory of important life events, and the reader is able to gain a greater understanding of Yambo, just as Yambo regains understanding of himself. Yet, Eco does not connect the dots cleanly. He characterizes Yambo’s recollections as a whirlwhird of thoughts that combine media with real events. At the end, cartoon characters are merging with real persons. Yambo’s memory is coming back, but he still has work to do pulling the pieces together.

I found Eco’s exploration of connections between media, personal characteristics, and life events interesting. I also appreciate literary efforts that apply ideas to fiction (this can provide an entertaining and insightful strategy for exploring ideas). However, the novel shifts a bit too far in favor of the idea over the story. The storyline is fairly simple, the prose not particularly elegant (although, this may be as much a critique of the translator as of Eco), and the dialogue lacked realism. For these reasons, this reviewer did not find the work “transcendent”, capturing some deeper aspect of the human condition.
...less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Glen Engel-Cox

Glen rated it:

(review of isbn 0151011400)

09/15/08

Read in April, 2006

Umberto Eco is one of those authors I really think I should like: his ideas on creativity, the connections that exist between people and culture, and his cleverness are all things that I admire. Unfortunately, I find his prose style dull and his plots prosaic and long-winded. I never could make it through The Name of the Rose and everytime I looked at one of his other novels in the store, I walked away without purchasing it. I ended up buying this one, his most recent, only because I (a) had a g...more Umberto Eco is one of those authors I really think I should like: his ideas on creativity, the connections that exist between people and culture, and his cleverness are all things that I admire. Unfortunately, I find his prose style dull and his plots prosaic and long-winded. I never could make it through The Name of the Rose and everytime I looked at one of his other novels in the store, I walked away without purchasing it. I ended up buying this one, his most recent, only because I (a) had a gift card, (b) it was 50% off, and (c) it purported to be an illustrated novel, with some kind of connection to comics, a favorite subject of mine. I figured, this had to be an Eco that I liked, if I was going to like an Eco.

I didn't like it, mainly because it is a "little" novel and not as clever as I had imagined it would be. The setup is grand--a sixtyish rare book dealer named Yambo has some kind of stroke that wipes his personal memory clear but leaves his cultural memory intact. This allows Eco to play a wild game of cultural word association as Yambo tries to deal with his close family, whom he doesn't recognize at all, by connecting them to books, movies, and music that he can remember. Yambo starts to delve into his own history in the most intense way, revealing that it is impossible to "go home again," simply because it took him 60 years to make those memories, and it would take nearly the same to recreate them through a personal archaelogy.

But that's the book, basically. It fails to go anywhere from there, but stays focused on Yambo's intense internal conflict, so much that after awhile it becomes only a device for the author rather than a means to advance the plot or some greater idea. There's a jolt about two-thirds in, where I expected something to happen, and something does, but something that drives Yambo even further inside himself.

I don't think it's a problem of translation, either. Simply, what interests Eco about his ideas is not the same thing that interests me, even though we both find the ideas themselves intriguing....less

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Sonja

Sonja rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

09/24/08

I liked this book more than "Baudalino," but less than "The Name of the Rose." It's the story of a man who wakes up from a coma and can't remember the details of his life, but does have an "encyclopedic" memory of all the literature and movies and art he's read/seen in his life. He goes back to his childhood home to try to recover his memory by looking through all the books, magazines, albums, and other stuff from his childhood. Umberto Eco is pretty esoteric, and h...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Tom

Tom rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

07/30/08

Read in July, 2008

Let me start by saying I am biased. No matter what others say, I've always enjoyed the works of Umberto Eco. I can remember the raw pleasure in reading The Name of the Rose, and the thought provoking nature of The Island of the Day Before (Both of which I've read twice).

The idea and delivery in The Mysterious Flam of Queen Loana is genius. Yombo, a 60 year old man who wakes up in a hospital, is unable to remember his personal life but can remember everything he ever read. Through the mix...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Jason

Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0156030438)

07/26/08

bookshelves: read-2008

Read in July, 2008

This book alternates between brilliance and boredom. We fall into the main character as he struggles to emerge from his coma and we are thrilled to be with him as he attempts to find his way back into his life: he tries to reconnect to his wife of many years, to his friends, his children, his business, all of which he has forgotten.

Then there is a lot of reading. We get summaries of so many books, of so much information, of so much stuff that we are overwhelmed and bored. Our protagonist ago...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 81 82 next »

book data (includes all editions)

avg rating (all editions): 3.28 (1005 ratings)
avg rating (this edition): 0.0 (0 ratings)
number of reviews: 170

recommend it | blog it

popular shelves

to-read (385)
currently-reading (156)
fiction (57)
own (17)
literature (11)
wishlist (5)
novels (5)
italian (5)
italy (3)
favorites (3)
More...

other editions