A review by jmatkinson1
Numero zero by Umberto Eco
5.0
English Edition
Colonna is a middle-aged writer who has never really made a success of his life. Dropping out of University he has had a series of failed jobs and relationships and lives in a run down apartment. Approached by a professor he worked under at university Colonna is commissioned to write a book about the launch of a new newspaper, a newspaper that is defined to fail. The money is good and Colonna accepts the job, working as a journalist on the launch issues but knowing that the plug is about to be pulled. Then 'stories' are pulled for no good reason and the journalists are asked to produce investigations to order. One, Braggadocio, exposes a set of complex conspiracy theories about the supposed death of Mussolini and the involvement of the Vatican and the Mafia. Then Braggadocio is murdered...
I am a big fan of Eco's writing but he is not the most straightforward or direct to read. In a previous book, Foucalt's Pendulum, the reader was lured into a complex plot which involved a conspiracy theory. Or did it? I really loved the development of paranoia and interpretation in that story. However it was a real doorstop of a book. This is completely different.
Eco picks up that idea about crucial events in history being the subject of a huge cover up and that a small group of people discover the truth but he places it in the paranoid Italy of the early 1990s. The book is short, very tight and an exhilarating read.
Colonna is a middle-aged writer who has never really made a success of his life. Dropping out of University he has had a series of failed jobs and relationships and lives in a run down apartment. Approached by a professor he worked under at university Colonna is commissioned to write a book about the launch of a new newspaper, a newspaper that is defined to fail. The money is good and Colonna accepts the job, working as a journalist on the launch issues but knowing that the plug is about to be pulled. Then 'stories' are pulled for no good reason and the journalists are asked to produce investigations to order. One, Braggadocio, exposes a set of complex conspiracy theories about the supposed death of Mussolini and the involvement of the Vatican and the Mafia. Then Braggadocio is murdered...
I am a big fan of Eco's writing but he is not the most straightforward or direct to read. In a previous book, Foucalt's Pendulum, the reader was lured into a complex plot which involved a conspiracy theory. Or did it? I really loved the development of paranoia and interpretation in that story. However it was a real doorstop of a book. This is completely different.
Eco picks up that idea about crucial events in history being the subject of a huge cover up and that a small group of people discover the truth but he places it in the paranoid Italy of the early 1990s. The book is short, very tight and an exhilarating read.