Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory - he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin. There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphical novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love.
Reviews
From Barnes & Noble
After a heart attack, Giambattista "Yambo" Bodini, an aging rare book dealer, awakens in a Milan hospital suffering from retrograde amnesia. He no longer knows his own name; can't recognize his once-beloved wife or daughters; and can't retrieve anything about his childhood or his career. His cardiac event has robbed him of all personal memories, but in a strange reprieve, Yambo retains total recall of every book, magazine, comic strip, movie, and song that he has ever experienced. Returning to the country home where he spent his childhood, he rummages through its paper clutter, searching for some trace of himself. The incomparable imagination of Umberto Eco running at a full, graceful gallop. Highly recommended.
Publishers Weekly
Guidall gives a polished, Masterpiece Theatre-worthy sheen to Eco's odd, funny tale of Yambo, a man who discovers that while remembering the plots and details of all the books and films he's ever read or seen, he has no recollection of his own life or his name. His sonorous tones are soothing, lending Eco's prose a certain hushed aura, but there is something strangely off about the marriage of the Italian author's intellectual mystery story and Guidall's rolling British cadences. It is as if Guidall's Oxbridge enunciation were thought necessary to gussy up Eco's novel, something it is distinctly not in need of. Overemoting, Guidall turns Yambo into a ham actor rather than a slightly comic figure befuddled by a world full of mysterious and alluring signs. Guidall does do a solid job capturing the quicksilver changes in emotional temperature of the volatile protagonist, who is unable to comprehend the confusing new world he finds himself in. Even in this, though, Guidall is more like an actor professing befuddlement than someone actually finding himself disoriented by his mind's empty spaces. Simultaneous release with Harcourt hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 21). (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Los Angeles Times
"An insidiously witty and provocative story" —Richard Eder
Library Journal
"The entertaining narrative fairly rips by. Another winner from Eco."
Kirkus Reviews
"A head-spinning tour through the corridors of history and popular culture, and one of this sly entertainer's liveliest yet."
Library Journal
Having lost all his memories except for every book and poem he has ever read, rare-books dealer Yambro flees to the old family home to reconstruct his life-which spools by here in graphic-novel format. With a nine-city tour. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An experience of "retrograde amnesia" stimulates journeys into both the darkened past and the undisclosed future-in the celebrated Italian polymath's fifth erudite doorstopper (Baudolino, 2002, etc.). Sixtyish book dealer Giambattista ("Yambo") Bodoni awakens in a Milan hospital after a heart attack that has erased all memory of his own life while leaving every scrap of every book, comic strip, pop song, movie and the like he has ever experienced perfectly intact. This splendid premise yields rich comedy in early pages that describe Yambo's bemused return to the home and family he no longer recognizes. Complications multiply when his wife Paola (a highly intelligent psychologist) persuades Yambo to retreat to Solaro, the country home owned by his grandfather (also a bookseller), where Yambo spent much of his childhood. Rummaging through old books and newspapers, letters, photographs, school notebooks and other memorabilia, Yambo retrieves details that partially explain his lifelong fascination with the phenomenon of fog and the concept of the "mysterious flame" that, he senses, quickens his imagination-and is "reminded" of Lila Saba, the girl he first loved. Then Eco throws things into another gear, as a "second incident" puts Yambo back in hospital, and into a coma in which his memory returns. We learn how he grew up in "Il Duce's" Italy, forsaking a religious conversion for the promises of sex, and surviving a perilous wartime adventure every bit the equal of his storybook heroes' exploits. Finally, attended by all the figures who graced his reading and dreaming, Yambo prepares himself for his reunion with Lila Saba. This charming story's considerable self-indulgence is largely vitiatedby dozens of wonderful period illustrations, the fun of trying to recognize numerous mangled literary and subliterary quotations, and its protagonist's ebullient (however damaged) sensibility. A head-spinning tour through the corridors of history and popular culture, and one of this sly entertainer's liveliest yet. Author tour
Bookpage
"Deeply cerebral, yet remarkably accessible...Eco delights his fans with an intellectual's take on nostalgia.."