The Island of the Day Before

The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco. Eco is a frustrating author for me. This is the third novel of his that I've read (the other two being Foucault's Pendulum and Baudolino). Without a doubt, he is one of the most brilliant writers I have ever read. He is a source of near-limitless arcane medieval knowledge, philosophical inquiry, and an unabashed polyglot. But as a storyteller or novelist as such, it seems that he is lacking something. I always feel that his books are good but not great; for one or more reasons they fail to make that leap from a good read - entertaining, philosophically rich, educational without exception - to a Great Book.

Island is a novel that I desperately wanted to be fantastic, and although I enjoyed it a great deal, it came up short. The story is told through a third-person narrator, who has discovered a manuscript written by Roberto della Griva detailing the events in the novel. As the story begins in 1643 the reader meets Roberto, who is alone on a ship moored off the coast of an island. He was swept from the deck of the ship in which he was traveling, the Amaryllis, during a storm, only to find himself aboard the Daphne, sitting in the bay of a gorgeous but seemingly deserted island. The narrative moves from the present to the past and back again, as Roberto recalls the events that led him to the Daphne - fighting in the Thirty Years War, evading his mysterious, dangerous alter ego Ferrando, and traveling in disguise on an English ship. The secret mission of the Amaryllis is to find the elusive Punto Fijo and discover the secret of longitude. This tool for accurate navigation would provide the nation who first discovered it immense power over her rivals.

Roberto comes across a crazy old priest who is also on board the Daphne who tells him about many things, and claims that the island is just over the International Date Line. As Roberto looks at the island he is in a sense looking into the past - hence the Island of the Day Before.

At times Eco actually discusses how he will write the rest of the novel within the narration. This meta-narrative quirk seems a bit forced and out of place; while clever, I found it to be too postmodern to work in this novel. There's a bit too much going on in Island, with Roberto's flashbacks and his half-crazed imagination running wild. His obsession with his evil alter ego, his past love, and his ceaseless ruminations on his past get to be tedious. There's a ton of esoteric stuff thrown into the story - navigation, astronomy, philosophy (including a lengthy detour from the perspective of a conscious rock, or something - I couldn't quite follow) - and it detracts from the overall narrative.

The Island of the Day Before is an intelligent novel - fascinating, brilliant, and beautiful at times, but the story suffers from what appears to be Eco's insatiable desire to wax academic without end or purpose. Eco fans will find much to love in The Island of the Day Before. Unfortunately they may very well find just as much that irks them.