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qatsiBook Review: The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco
I started reading this at the tail end of my holiday, and it took a couple of weeks to get through. I expected it to be heavy, with Eco playing with the reader, but even so, it was nearly 200 pages before it really got going. Or did it? It started to go, and might have made something of it, and then it stopped again, descending into raving. Roberto de Grive is a minor noble who, after losing his father in a rather inconsequential siege, finds his way to Paris and falls in with a louche crowd, whereupon he manages to fall foul of Church authorities, who determine that he can redeem himself by sailing incognito on a mission to the other side of the world, learning the secrets of that mission. However, we begin with his survival of a shipwreck; he clambers on board another apparently deserted but adequately provisioned ship. Within sight, but out of reach, is land where, he comes to believe, in a rather misunderstood way, it is the day before.
Eco clearly had a plan, with multiple layers: the author himself, narrating from the writing of Roberto, part diary, part romantic fiction on the subject of his love and his imaginary, nemesistic brother. But either I don't have the literary references, or it's just too oblique, for much of it to make sense. It just felt like Eco was repeatedly pushing away from completing a journey, of any sort, with more and more absurd diversions. Ultimately, the conclusion makes sense, but in a rather empty, resigned way. The only sense of achievement was in having seen the book through to the end, which is disappointing, because at times it felt that the story could actually have been about something.
I started reading this at the tail end of my holiday, and it took a couple of weeks to get through. I expected it to be heavy, with Eco playing with the reader, but even so, it was nearly 200 pages before it really got going. Or did it? It started to go, and might have made something of it, and then it stopped again, descending into raving. Roberto de Grive is a minor noble who, after losing his father in a rather inconsequential siege, finds his way to Paris and falls in with a louche crowd, whereupon he manages to fall foul of Church authorities, who determine that he can redeem himself by sailing incognito on a mission to the other side of the world, learning the secrets of that mission. However, we begin with his survival of a shipwreck; he clambers on board another apparently deserted but adequately provisioned ship. Within sight, but out of reach, is land where, he comes to believe, in a rather misunderstood way, it is the day before.
Eco clearly had a plan, with multiple layers: the author himself, narrating from the writing of Roberto, part diary, part romantic fiction on the subject of his love and his imaginary, nemesistic brother. But either I don't have the literary references, or it's just too oblique, for much of it to make sense. It just felt like Eco was repeatedly pushing away from completing a journey, of any sort, with more and more absurd diversions. Ultimately, the conclusion makes sense, but in a rather empty, resigned way. The only sense of achievement was in having seen the book through to the end, which is disappointing, because at times it felt that the story could actually have been about something.