Amy's review

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
by Umberto Eco

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10503.The_Mysterious_Flame_of_Queen_Loana?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166253875m/10503.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10503.The_Mysterious_Flame_of_Queen_Loana?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1730.Umberto_Eco">Umberto Eco</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8381033?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 4 of 5 stars<br/>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 in the children's room of the library the first time I read Where the Wild Things Are, sitting on the floor with my little sister. I was alone in a musty old dorm room the first time I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
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<br/>There are a hundred other memories connected to each of those memories. I could reconstruct half my life out of books, another 2/5ths out of music and lines from bad movies. That's more or less the outrageous premise of Mysterious Flame. A man wakes up from a coma with no memory of who he is, but an encyclopedic memory of things he's read or heard. He eventually tries to restore his lost past by sorting through years of books, school papers, magazines, records and propaganda posters at his long-abandoned family estate.
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<br/>It's a slightly bizarre concept for a novel and not the kind of book that everyone will like, but I loved it.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/269027?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Amy's review
rating:

recommended for: those who use books as landmarks
status: Read in November, 2007

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 in the children's room of the library the first time I read Where the Wild Things Are, sitting on the floor with my little sister. I was alone in a musty old dorm room the first time I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

There are a hundred other memories connected to each of those memories. I could reconstruct half my life out of books, another 2/5ths out of music and lines from bad movies. That's more or less the outrageous premise of Mysterious Flame. A man wakes up from...more

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