The Island of the Day Before
by Umberto Eco
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Book Summary Information
Author: Umberto EcoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-05
ISBN: 0156030373
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The Island of the Day Before
Book Review: A sea of irony holds no prisoners...
Summary: 3 Stars
Marooned on a supposedly deserted ship within sight of an island photophobic nobleman Roberto della Griva must surive, and for a man to survive he must tell stories. So he writes a series of letters to his love from which this story is constructed by a 20th-century scholar some time later. Interesting as this sounds it soon gets bogged down in an ever-present sense of irony.
Don't get me wrong: I love irony as a story-telling device and use it myself in my poor attempts at fiction, but I think Eco should have kept about half the irony found in this book to himself. It is too much of a good thing, and the book drowns in it. At some point or other Eco ridicules practically every character he creates. Even those who generally hold his views do not remain unscathed, like the knight Saint-Savin, who is a secularist and humanist but who seems to believes coffee can cure pretty much anything. I can just imagine Eco snickering to himself behind his typewriter (though I'm not sure if he wrote it in longhand or on a PC in real-life - this is addressed to nitpickers). Even the final words of the book, an afterword where the author tells where he got the letters that inspired this book, have several ironic notes, which is good that it is the end, because by that time I've had enough of that. Ultimately this will alienate many readers, such as myself, though some might regard this element differently.
Otherwise this is a fascinating, haunting and formidable book, like the other books by Eco I've read. It covers a wide range of subjects, including my favourites: The Powder of Sympathy and the Longitude Pronlem. ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE is not as good as FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM or as devestating as THE NAME OF THE ROSE but it's not so boring or unreadable as some people claim it to be.
PS: If you want to read more on the Longitude Problem, there is an excellent non-fiction book by Dava Sobel on the subject, named LONGITUDE.
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