The island of the day before1/6/2024 Eco gives us a crash course in Baroque methods of argument and reasoning as Caspar and Roberto debate heliocentrism and physics. Plus, the metamorphosis of the Intruder into Father Caspar gives Roberto a welcome companion on the Daphne and provides us with numerous interesting conversations and debates. After all, Eco's style is just so enchanting that it is impossible to stay mad at him for long, even when his narratives do not take the turns you want or expect. That disappointed me at first, but I quickly adapted. He is right: for one thing, the Intruder turned out to be real. One person cautioned me not to see too many similarities between these two books. It seemed more likely that the Intruder was like Ferrante, Roberto's imagined older brother banished for crimes unknown. Except the way that the narrator presents Roberto's search for this Intruder, interspersed with more flashbacks to his life growing up in La Griva, his coming-of-age at Casale, and his itinerant adventures in France, I started wondering if the Intruder was even real. Who could it be? Another survivor from the Amaryllis? More likely, someone left aboard from the Daphne. Roberto spends several chapters exploring the Daphne and trying to discover the nature of this Intruder. Someone else is stealing eggs from the hens, rummaging through the letters he writes to his lost, unrequited love: in short, there is an Intruder aboard. When Roberto, himself the sole survivor of the shipwrecked Amaryllis arrives on the anchored yet abandoned Daphne, he soon discovers he is not alone. In so doing, not only do we learn about this period, but we get exposed to Baroque ways of thinking and reasoning through the use of metaphor, allegory, and syllogism.Īt first, The Island of the Day Before seemed like it would employ the same meta-fictional ambiguity present in Foucault's Pendulum. Instead, Eco invites us to share in that knowledge through this narrative. He shows off his knowledge of history, but it's not done solely to impress the reader or display how much more he knows of the seventeenth century. Eco is erudite and eloquent in his style. And do not get me started about Foucault's Pendulum, which remains one of my favourite books. The Name of the Rose was a fascinating medieval mystery that fanned the flames of my interest in medieval rhetoric. His books are not transparent and not easy to read, but they are so good. The reason I read one and only one Umberto Eco book is that Eco, more than any other author I have ever encountered, makes me think. However, this is not a retrospective on my reading over the entire year this is a book review. If The Island does not join them in this honour, it is only because I have been lucky enough to read so many other great books in 2010. For the past two years, each Eco book has also made its respective year's list of the best ten books I read that year. Reading a book by Umberto Eco has become a yearly tradition since I joined Goodreads, and for 2010 I just managed to squeeze The Island of the Day Before under the wire.
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