The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

Just before his 60th birthday, Yambo Bodoni suffers a stoke which leaves him with a strange memory loss.  His encyclopedic memory for things he has learned is intact but he remembers nothing about himself.  In search of self, he decides to spend time in his family's summer home.  There he finds stacks of magazines, posters and newspapers from his youth, many from the WWll era.  Fine quality illustrations from many of these items are scattered throughout the text and do much to cut through the fog of his memory and provide the reader with an interesting window of the 1930's and 40's.  What happened to the long lost love which seems to appear at the edge of his mind?  What role did he and his family play in WWll?  What is the reason for these mysterious "flames of memory" he encounters as he reads through these stacks from long ago?  Reading through the richly illustrated final section of the book is meant to provide a window into Yambo's jumbled memory but must be what it is like to wander through the mind of someone like Eco.