Island of the Day Before (Paperback)

The worst part is having the main character stranded and unmotivated just off the shore of this fabulous island. As a reader, I'm dying to get off the boat and onto the island! But the main character is happy to sit on the boat and just fantasize--it's more than a little frustrating.

Another troublesome part is the very creative Latin-based words that the author--or perhaps the translator--uses. I'm an active reader and, as such, keep a list of any new words that I find in a novel. I actually reference the list, look them up, and then read again in context. During my reading of Island, I often found twenty such words per chapter. Some of these are archaic words from the middle ages (e.g. 'arquebuses' meaning heavy matchlock guns) while others seem to be creative constructions from Latin that do not appear in my collegiate dictionary. People with an unabridged dictionary (if these words are even in the unabridged dictionary) may not mind, but for me it was annoying to find many words, and thus important phrases, left undecyphered.

Okay, now we're getting to the better parts of this novel. First, the characters are multi-dimensional, complex, funny and often somewhat contradictory: i.e., they seem real. You are drawn into a colorul, chaotic medieval world of intrigue, philosophy, romance and power politics. The characters are unforgettable, as are the crazy theories espoused in that time period...which get considerable play in the novel.

Finally, the best part is the mental creation, on the part of the main character, of an identical twin brother who becomes resonsible for every misadventure and misfortune of the main character. He becomes so convinced of the other's existence that it starts to affect his destiny. This ongoing theme is likened to the new, at the time, Paris-spawned talk of 'unconscious concepts' that steer a man and thwart his otherwise conscious life. For the main character, this imaginary brother symbolizes the unconscious concepts and shows--even today--how often we have only ourselves to blame for our most tenacious problems.

Overall, the writing makes reading the book a delight. Still, I give it only three stars because: a) Eco should know better than to write a novel where so much time is spent stranded alone on a boat with a more-than-a-little depressed main character, b) certain vocabulary choices--esp. the invented, dictionary-thwarting, Latin-based words--detract from the author's effort to reach even the seasoned reader, c) the ending leaves me feeling that Eco just stopped writing, rather than neatly ending this multi-threaded novel by tying a suitable bow. If you can stomach these aspects, perhaps by reading quickly, you'll yet enjoy the colorful characters and artful writing.

Others criticize Eco on his meandering thoughts and ideas; on his half-truths/half-fictions; his playful use of alternate reality; and his obvious disregard for probability. I say 'what the heck are you reading Eco for, then?'

It took me four years of owning this book to read it. Prior to this, I could not do it. But now, with Name of the Rose and Baudolino under my belt, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, devouring it from cover to cover, and opening my mind to all that Eco has to offer...

Roberto, the 'hero' of the story, finds himself stranded on board the Daphne, a boat anchored just offshore an unreachable island. Without wind, without crew, and without a know-how of swimming, Roberto explores his new 'prison', having survived a shipwreck of the vessel Amaryllis.

Finding that he is indeed NOT alone on the boat, Roberto prepares to flush out the intruder and face him down. But what Roberto discovers is not quite what he set out to find.
The novel flows back and forth in time, as well as in and out of 'reality' as Roberto weaves a tale of his childhood and the invention of his dark twin Ferrante, who dogs him throughout his life, to the discovery of his lady-love, Lilia; to his induction as a spy for Cardinal Richelieu; to his arrival on the Daphne, and the education he receives there in mapping the latitudes and longitudes of the planet.

Like the other 2 Eco novels I have read, there is so much to be gleaned from the pages of this book...whether you enjoy the mingling of fact and fiction or not, for an avid reader like myself, willing to open my mind to flights of fancy...the challenge to your thought processes cannot be beat.

A wonderful read....and worth the wait to be able to accomplish it.

The book begins telling how Roberto della Grive became stranded in a deserted ship on the other side of the world, and what his mission there was. Two thirds of the story are a description of Roberto's early life, a war, his passage through Paris, a platonic love affair and a conversation with Cardinal Mazarino. The final third tells how Roberto, alone in the ship with the unreachable island across the 180º meridian in front of him, slowly looses his mental faculties, creating a new, imaginary life for himself and disussing with no one about the size of the universe and thinking if the moon is inhabited or not.

This book is a combination of historical fiction with philosophy class. But I think Eco would not be my favourite teacher. Sometimes he simply tires the reader with endless discussions about uninteresting topics. However, there's no denying "The island of the day before" is, for the most part, a good book, extremely well written and very beautiful. But it was not entirely for my taste, and I think Eco's other fictional books are better than this one.

Grade 8.1/10