Scan barcode
A review by emmaisnotavampire
Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
I always say I don't like virtuosos of any kind, but apparently I am clearly lying to myself, because this highly intellectual meta-narration was just so brilliant, so captivating, so cleverly ironic and ironically clever. Calvino's iconic, often irreverent, quirky tone of voice perfectly matches the magically absurd events of this book, or rather of this collection of - interrupted - books.
What is a plot when you have such a strong concept? Calvino seems to ask. Well, he surely proved that his literary genius surely doesn't need one to fully express his potential. Yet, despite stating that the only story, or rather stories, is contained within the discontinued incipits, he links all of the interrupting events together in a surreal and eccentric second-person narration that hides, behind the most unrealistic reader love story, the connections that we thought nonexistent between all of the books, mostly through Ludmilla's constant claim that "she likes the kind of book in which...", introducing the theme of research that, concretised in the search for the original manuscript that the Reader embarks on, also translates to a more metaphorical search for meaning, fulfilment, for a purpose, a sense to it all, via the different sensibilities that each incipit expresses.
Lastly, I'd like to dedicate a final thought to Calvino's mastery of writing, the skill with which he managed to not only make me passionate about one book, nor even a double book - the short story collection and the bigger story that contains them all -, but to ten, eleven different novels, thanks to the fact that, despite reading as a tale of its own, each one is rather presented as an incipit, a beginning, implying that the plot continues somewhere out there, in the ether. Oh how I'd love to be able to read all of those fictional novels too!
What is a plot when you have such a strong concept? Calvino seems to ask. Well, he surely proved that his literary genius surely doesn't need one to fully express his potential. Yet, despite stating that the only story, or rather stories, is contained within the discontinued incipits, he links all of the interrupting events together in a surreal and eccentric second-person narration that hides, behind the most unrealistic reader love story, the connections that we thought nonexistent between all of the books, mostly through Ludmilla's constant claim that "she likes the kind of book in which...", introducing the theme of research that, concretised in the search for the original manuscript that the Reader embarks on, also translates to a more metaphorical search for meaning, fulfilment, for a purpose, a sense to it all, via the different sensibilities that each incipit expresses.
Lastly, I'd like to dedicate a final thought to Calvino's mastery of writing, the skill with which he managed to not only make me passionate about one book, nor even a double book - the short story collection and the bigger story that contains them all -, but to ten, eleven different novels, thanks to the fact that, despite reading as a tale of its own, each one is rather presented as an incipit, a beginning, implying that the plot continues somewhere out there, in the ether. Oh how I'd love to be able to read all of those fictional novels too!