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Summary: excellent book fast shipping thank you
Review: this is a good book amazon's fast shipping made my online shopping a breeze
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Summary: A journey through the ages aboard the Daphne.
Review: Oops. Umberto Eco did it again.After causing me to spend some days trying to unravel the plots in his novel and doing research in order to have an idea of the setting,he scored one more victory at getting me hooked. The Island of the Day Before constitutes for me, a lover of history and linguistics; a devout and inquisitive Catholic,another jewel in Eco's legacy as a writer and scholar. I guess that my purpose in reading Eco comes from an urge to enter the mentality of men and women (although I don't remember femenine characters in his work) in different epochs in history. Both looking at the circumstances surrounding young Robert de la Grive and observing his interpretation of his past and present are enough to engage a reader like me, no matter how many times one has to stop in order to trace connections with what one has read.Finally, I found it most placid spending a few lines on the subject of metaphorical language--- Grive, a very young man working for Mazarin in the 1640s i
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Summary: Less Than I Expected
Review: The Name of the Rose was entertaining, atmospheric and engagingly complex. Foucault's Pendulum proved to be one of the most enjoyable reads I've encountered over the last two decades. Yes, it was full of recondite musings and had one of the most convoluted plots in literature, but Eco kept it moving apace, his mind (and this reader's admittedly short attention-span) never flagging. The Island of the Day Before, on the other hand, left me feeling marooned, lost at sea. If that were Eco's purpose, some sort of analagous experience, he succeeded hands-down. I felt like a shipmate of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, adrift on a stagnant ocean, with nary a puff of wind to set us in motion. It was almost as if Eco had poured so much of himself into writing "Pendulum" that he was intellectually and artistically spent when it came to writing this one. I find his discourses on Semiotics more entertaining than is this dead sea scroll. Truly lugubrious going and readers would be far better advised to stick to FP and TNOTR.
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Summary: Great, But Not Eco's Best
Review: Roberto della Griva, the protagonist of The Island of the Day Before, was born in 1614, a member of one of the minor noble families of northern Italy, vassals of the Marquis of Monferrato. While still a young child, Roberto manages to convince himself that he has an evil brother, Ferrante, kept secret by his family, to whom he ascribes all his bad actions. Ferrante serves to explain Roberto's bad luck, for everything bad that happens to Roberto is Ferrante's fault and Roberto must therefore go through life being punished for Ferrante's misdeeds. At the age of sixteen, Roberto's father is killed at the Siege of Casale, the fortress guarding the frontier between Italy and France. Roberto manages to return to Italy long enough to arrange a yearly income for himself before travelling to France. Roberto arrives in Paris in the early 1640s, at the moment of the transition of power between Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin. Having an interest in astronomy and philosophy, Roberto frequents the scientific salons and we learn much about the early 17th century. During the course of his visits, Roberto falls in love with one the great ladies of Paris and mistakenly believes that she returns his love. He begins writing her a series of leters that eventually fall into the hands of the narrator and form the basis of the book. Ferrante intervenes, however, in the guise of Cardinal Mazarin and Roberto's carefree life in Paris comes to an end. France is engaged in a race with England to find the answer to the problem of longitude, and Mazarin blackmails Roberto into booking passage on the Dutch vessel, the Amaryllis, bound for the South Seas. When the ship sinks during a storm, Roberto, for once, forsaken by Ferrante and enjoying good luck instead of bad, is the sole survivor. Roberto eventually washes up on the Daphne, another deserted Dutch ship that was also sailing in the interests of science. Anchored off an island in the South Pacific, the Daphne is located on what Roberto comes to believe is the Prime Meridian. He thus believes that when he sits on the deck of the ship on the west side, and gazes at the island on the east side, he is truly looking at the day before. Roberto soon learns that the Daphne is not quite as deserted as it had seemed when he encounters the Jesuit priest, Father Caspar Wanderdrossel. Father Wanderdrossel has also been seeking the mystery of longitude in hopes that the answer will reveal to him the source of the Great Flood. Besides engaging in a series of lengthy discussions with Wanderdrossel, Roberto also spends his time aboard the Daphne writing memoirs and love letters. Despite the fact that the island to the east is inhabited by cannibals and neither Roberto nor Wanderdrossel can swim, they decide they must reach the shore. Wanderdrossel devises a strange invention that would seem to permit him to walk to the island over the ocean floor, but when Roberto lowers him over the side, Wanderdrossel is never seen again. Alone, Roberto occupies himself with his writings which now deal almost exclusively with his alter ego, Ferrante. Roberto eventually comes up with a fitting end for Ferrante and soon after, he, himself drowns, leaving behind only his letters and memoirs. The Island of the Day Before seems to have no point and, in fact, it does not. But this is only part of the book's beauty. Eco uses the book to give us a grand tour of the 17th century while the characters search for cohesion and meaning that just isn't there. This isn't always bad. In The Name of the Rose, Eco played out the same theme while giving us a discourse on late medieval ecclesiastical politics, but he also entertained us brilliantly with a Sherlock Holmes parody. For some people, part of this novel's problem no doubt lies in the time period in which it is set. In the 17th century, no one expected life to make much sense. People lived according to signs and symbols. Their prose and politics were complex and obscure. While a few, such as Descartes, searched for answers, most simply accepted what was imposed. Eco might argue that his novel only parodies life, which, ultimately, has no point. And, who knows, he could be right. But The Island of the Day Before is not real life. It is a book and Eco is a master writer. As beautiful as it is, the journey from beginning to end should have been larger than life and a lot more fun.
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Summary: a masterpiece
Review: For those looking at easy to read, holywood style action or entertainement fiction - just forget it. The Island of the Day Before is a very deep philosophical piece of work framed within a bizarre, practically improbable plot (those looking for a "realistic" story should keep away from this book as well). It is not even remotely similar to Eco's classic the Name of the Rose, it is very *different* - symphonic, wondereous, intellectually stimulating but unusual piece of work.
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Summary: Interesting if confusing history lesson
Review: I've got friends who swear by this guy and from their descriptions I got the impression that he was one of those writers who made complicated plots just for the sake of being complicated, dressed it up with erudite language and swirled it all together into a fairly challenging mix. Now, being that I can cite Pynchon and Gaddis as some of my favorite writers, I figured, oh what the heck? Well, after getting this book for fairly cheap, I just gave it a shot and finished it even quicker than I thought and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The plot itself seems fairly simple, guy gets shipwrecked on a ship, writers letters that reveal much about his early life, interacts with a priest stowed away with him, debates all this Philosophical. Needless to say, some of the philosophy can be hard to follow, and I can't even blame the translator for that because he seems to capture most of the inherent poetry in Eco's language, he may not have many "read out loud" passages like Pynchon does but he's certainly more poetic than a lot of what's out there. The historical aspect is interesting, he doesn't really shed anymore light on the time than other writers and his characters don't seem to be more than mouthpieces for the sometimes witty arguments (my favorite remains when Roberto and the priest debate whether the earth revolves around the sun or the other way around) that pepper the book. Of course my complaints would be that not much really happens and so readers not used to almost nonexistent plot devlopement might be turned off, as I said before the characters are a bit flat and frankly maybe I'm too dense but I really can't see the point of what Eco is getting at. He doesn't seem to be parodying historical novels (like John Barth did with the Sot-Weed Factor) and he doesn't seem to be mocking the times and, well, like I said, maybe I'm just too dense. Oh well. It's a more accessible novel than his other works and readers wanting to see what he's all about might want to start here just to get a taste of what he's capable of. But I highly doubt this is his best work. Time will tell though.
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Summary: Run away!
Review: The title, artwork and jacket of this book intrigued me enough to make me buy it. The premise of a man being shipwrecked on an actual ship is interesting--but the story falls apart after a description of how the hero got to be in his predicament. I expected a story and got a lot of history-babble that subtracted from the premise. I'm in the habit of finishing every book I start--and I found myself calculating the number of pages I would have to tolerate each day to get through it and on to some John Updike.
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Summary: Weakest of Eco's fiction -- not that that's a bad thing
Review: IotDB is the weakest of Eco's three novels--but that is like saying Luke is the weakest of the Gospels. IotDB is a great read, but when held up to either Name of the Rose or Foucault's Pendulum, it pales in comparison.
Why? Well, for two reasons. One, IotDB is actually two books, the first could be called "the Education of Roberto della Griva" while the second would be titled "the Island of the Day Before"; and the two books are so disparate in tone and style that it is disconcerting to read. Two, unlike his other books, Eco has a tendency in this one to say too little about too much and too much about too little; he seems unable to find a healthy balance between the two, and he'll either ramble on about one thing for an inordinate amount of time, or ramble over a whole lot of things in a very quick amount of time.
That being said, it is still an excellent book, and if you have not read Eco before, it is a great one to cut your teeth on. The traditionally tough Umberto Eco opening is considerably longer in IotDB, so you will be better prepared for the other books. Also, once you get past the opening, the book is a breeze and is lot easier to read than the other two.
A note for anything Eco: if you read something, and you don't understand it, keep going; either it is important and will be fully explained later, or it is unimportant and isn't explained later--in which case you need not worry about it.
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Summary: More light-hearted and humorous than some other Eco
Review: This is an entertaining story which is more accessible than "Foucault's Pendulum", for example. Some of it was very funny and even touching. I've read the reviews below, the main criticism which I would agree with is that towards the end the story suffers from lack of focus.But if you think about what passes for "literature" in the mass market, Eco's work is so far above the mean that I have to give it 5 stars.
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Summary: Best Eco Book
Review: I found this to be the best read from Eco ever. It borders on poetry. It's unlike any book I've ever read. I could compare it to getting lost in an art/world history museum and seeing all of its subjects suddenly come to life in a majestic performance. If you are thinking about reading anything by Umberto Eco, try this first.
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