It's a story about memories, so it's only apt that this is one of the few books that are tied to a memory for me - we were visiting Israel when the wife and I decided to leave the kids with their grandparents and go for a night at a hotel in Tel-Aviv. It was a boutique hotel, and one of the things I loved about it is each room had a large library -- a real library, with actual good books, not just an assortment of cheap garbage and coffee-table books.
I felt bad for the books, because who the hell reads a book from a hotel library during their vacation? So I picked one I wasn't familiar with and started reading it. It was The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. And I really liked the premise. I asked the concierge if they sell the books so I could finish reading it, and they did, but for ridiculously high prices. Which is only fair. So I ordered the book on Amazon and it was waiting for me by the time we got back. This was actually quite a while ago, but I finally got around to reading it, and I'm really happy all this serendipitous thing happened, because it's a great book.
This is actually my first ever Eco, which is probably not a good place to start at, but never mind.

Queen Loana is a bit of a strange book, and I can see why some people wouldn't take to it. It combines several genres, and if you don't happen to like one of them, the book will seem annoying. The book is divided into three sections, but it's actually four parts. The first section sets up the premise of the story: an antiquarian has a stroke and loses all personal memories, while retaining all his erudition: he can remember every book he ever read, but he can't remember anything that he had an emotional attachment to, including his family. He therefore sets out to his childhood home in search for something to job his memory.
The second section, and the bulk of the book, is a treatise on the cultural life of Italy under Fascism. I say treatise and I mean it - it's not much for narration, but rather musings about different aspects of life and culture under Il Duce. I found it fascinating. I felt like the story here is a metaphor for Italy itself forgetting its own past, a nation attempting to pretend something awful it did never actually happened. I don't know if this is a fair characterization, and I don't actually think the last section of the book makes this a reasonable interpretation, but it was interesting for me to think of Eco's musings from that perspective.
The last section, containing the last two parts of the book, goes under the title (in the Greek) "Homesickness". In it, the narrator has suffered a second stroke and is suspended in a state of hallucination. In it he regains (presumably) his memory, and relives his childhood during the Second World War. Here my "metaphor" interpretation breaks down somewhat - for rather than remembering his horrible past, he remembers a heroic act. And yes, that act involved killing German soldiers, and he is scarred by it, but it heroic nonetheless. I could preserve the metaphor interpretation if I assume this memory is false - a way to replace true gruesome acts with something more palatable, but I don't think this interpretation is really supported by the story.
Finally, the last part of the story is a psychedelic hallucination, illustrated with images taken from comic books and pulp fiction, which is the narrator's final descent towards death. I really loved this section, although I can't claim to make sense of it. It's insane, and chaotic, but still beautiful and evocative.

I still need some time to figure out how the four different parts come together to form one coherent whole. Right now, my mind is still swimming in Eco's beautiful prose, the vivid descriptions and powerful emotions. I can, nevertheless, say without hesitation that this was a beautiful book.