The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
"The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" by Umberto Eco centers on Giamattista Bodoni, known as Yambo, an antiquarian book dealer who experiences a profound loss of identity following an accident. While Yambo retains the ability to recall every book he has read, he is unable to remember anything about his own life for the past sixty years. In his quest to recover his sense of self, he returns to his ancestral home in Solara, where he sifts through a treasure trove of books, photographs, and papers in search of personal clues. The narrative is richly illustrated, incorporating visual elements that enhance the storytelling. The novel delves into themes of memory and identity, utilizing metaphors such as fog to symbolize Yambo's disorientation. Eco also explores the concept of time through the character of Paola, who suggests that people exist within three contexts of time: expectation, attention, and memory. This book can be seen as a bildungsroman, reflecting Yambo's personal growth and search for meaning, despite his advanced age. Through its intricate storytelling, the novel invites readers to contemplate the nature of memory and self-discovery.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana, 2004 (English translation, 2005)
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Eco’s protagonist, called Yambo although his full name is Giamattista Bodoni (for the eighteenth century Italian printer who designed a popular style of type), is an antiquarian book dealer who suffers an accident, not fully detailed by the author, that leaves him able to remember everything he has ever read but unable to remember anything about his own existence during the past sixty years. Seeking to regain his lost identity, Yambo, at the urging of Paola, his psychologist wife, returns to his ancestral home, Solara, where he seeks clues to his identity through the thousands of papers, books, and photographs he finds there. The Eco novel is richly illustrated with much of this material.
Although he has a vivid recollection of the elements of his past, Yambo has lost the “self” of his past and is searching to regain it. Eco uses fog metaphorically throughout much of this novel to mirror Yambo’s confused condition, which reminds one of the Capgras Syndrome that Richard Powers employed in his novel The Echo Maker (2006), published shortly after Eco’s book.
As in his earlier works, Eco deals here with the time continuum. Paola says that people live in three time contexts—expectation, attention, and memory—and much of Eco’s novel illustrates the truth of her statement. This novel can be classified as a bildungsroman, or developmental, coming-of-age novel, despite the protagonist’s age.
Review Sources
America 193, no. 5 (August 29, 2005): 25-26.
Booklist 101, no. 13 (March 1, 2005): 1102.
Entertainment Weekly, June 3, 2005, p. 91.
Kirkus Reviews 73, no. 4 (February 15, 2005): 190.
Library Journal 130, no. 6 (April 1, 2005): 85.
The New Leader 88, no. 3 (May/June, 2005): 36-38.
New Statesman 134 (June 20, 2005): 53-54.
The New York Review of Books 52, no. 10 (June 9, 2005): 25-26.
The New York Times Book Review 154 (June 12, 2005): 38-38.
Publishers Weekly 252, no. 12 (March 21, 2005): 34.
The Times Literary Supplement, June 10, 2005, pp. 26-27.