Eco's Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is like a Yakov Smirnoff joke: In America, people tell stories. For Eco, stories tell people! What a country.
In a nutshell, Yambo (protagonist) has lost his memory, and tries to find himself by reading all the books and comics of his youth. Good idea, and for a brief moment it seems like you could carry a book that way. But it quickly becomes obvious how futile this is for Yambo, and for Eco as well. How many obscure fascist comics does Eco need to reference before you get the idea that the number of books Yambo ever read doesn't add up to Yambo? Not that many. At least, not as many as Eco thinks it takes, sadly.
What kills this book is what kills the other Eco books, and this one doesn't have the salvation of a William Weaver translation. Great ideas, beaten to death in a storm of clunky writing. And lots it. However, it's a gorgeously designed hardcover, and looks good on my shelf.
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