Reviews

Another reread. I spent all summer explicitly trying to read "challenging" books and I housed this in like 36 hours. The plot: colonna is contacted by the kind of skeezy newspaper guy simei to ghostwrite a book on his year in charge of Domani, a new paper set up by the mysterious sketchy striving rich guy commendatore vimercate. Vimercate probably doesn't intend to ever have the paper published, but wants to use it to gain access and power into rich guy world's that he feels shut out from. Because they have the luxury of not actually publishing the news at it comes out they can alter their coverage to seem a little more prophetic and on top of trends. One thread of the novel involves conversations in the newsroom which are seemingly there just so eco can play around with ideas about how the media influences the public (does the paper shape public opinion or is it shaped by? Both). At the same time, the conspiratorial braggadocio (apparently they don't have that word over there!) gets obsessed with conspiracy surrounding Mussolini's body and is convinced Mussolini didn't actually die at the end of WWII, instead he was hid either in them Vatican or Argentina and he died on the eve of the Borghese coup. He prattles on like the holy fool of conspiratorial thinking but includes pages and pages of verifiably true shit about NATO in western Europe which mostly postdates the coup which is rhetorically kind of intetesting. Colonna entertains all this and even seems surprised by it (which is weird; apparently speculation about Mussolini's death is, in Italy, the way the JFK assassination is here and it would feel strange to have a newspaper editor act like some gormless greenhorn upon hearing someone dive into grassy knoll talk). Colonna also begins an affair with Maia, a younger reporter whose contributions are always shot down. A third reporter is assumed to be a spy. Eventually braggadocio winds up dead and the whole thing unravels. Maia and colonna consider fleeing to a country where the illegal maneuvering of those in power are all out in the open but decide that Italy is well on its way to becoming such a place.
The conversations in the newsroom about what media (broadly and narrowly defined I these) actually does were interesting. I think maybe we all live in the kind of place Maia and colonna describe at the end nowadays. Things are overt and yet nothing changes. Maybe eco recognized that the people in the newsroom always either exaggerated or misunderstood their role in shaping the public. I've recently felt like media (broadly defined) shapes public perception to a huge degree but in a way that is completely outside the control of an individual or even a conglomerate, even a disciplined well funded one like Fox or something. It's a conduit not a catalyst. Also I'm sure there's a lot hidden in the little word games Maia plays given ecos whole signs and symbols deal. I particularly liked him filling a whole page of increasingly ridiculous European nobility names and titles. It's a gag that will always work for me but there's a lot of information encoded in there too.
You don't feel much for the characters but I did find colonna talking to Maia about what it's like to be a loser kind of moving. I had also incorrectly remembered a bloodier ending and I would have been kinda upset by that I'm glad I was wrong.

irissuurmond's review against another edition

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mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

marciazinha's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

ksu_ads's review against another edition

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2.0

I feel very strange giving a book from Umberto Eco such a low rating, but the whole time I was listening to it, I wondered how if can be that book is so small and still I would throw out a half because it does not add anything to the plot, to the story or to the background idea?
The book is supposed to be a satire on media that rather care about headlines and provide news that their core audience supposedly is interested in. In the beginning it also reads like that, but then it develops in a story that I did not find enjoyable or interesting to read. If this story would be written as an essay with some personal example and thoughts, it would be much shorter, contain all the relevant ideas and much more interesting to read. But it is not.

betka_s's review against another edition

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3.0

Spíš 3 a půl

iamveronikagold's review against another edition

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5.0

Dalsi dokonale putavy pribeh a ked si na 150 strane uvedomis ze si uveril tomu ze sa to vsetko naozaj stalo a ze nevies co je realita a co nie :))) ... nemozes mu dat menej ako 5 hviezdiciek

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