Scan barcode
maybebil's review against another edition
3.0
calvino’s writing is always so simple yet immersive - speaks to all the senses. i enjoyed this :’)
starrynight's review
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
kaypat23's review against another edition
2.0
I'm a bit torn on this because Italo Calvino's books are usually hit or miss. They can be towering flights of fancy with the most beautiful language you have ever seen or they can be like this book. Not perfect, not imperfect...feels a little unfinished and a little weird. This book would be the person you avoid on the subway at night not because they are scary but because they're just strange and you know you won't vibe with them.
The note at the back really allowed me to fully understand what the whole damn thing was about. Calvino wanted to write a book about the five senses: Taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch. He only managed to finish three stories before he fell ill and died. Hence, this is why we have...
A Jaguar Sun = A story about taste
A King Listens = A story about hearing?? Perhaps? I did not finish this because it got a little boring. It also could be a story about the mind.
The Name, The Nose = Pretty self explanatory. It's a story about smell.
Overall, the only story I liked from this collection was A Jaguar Sun. I didn't like the second and third story.
The book is only about 96 or 56 pages long depending on your edition. I finished the stories within an hour. A person who enjoys short stories might like this.
A Jaguar Sun
The first story was typical Calvino and it is just as dazzling as I expected it to be. The lush language, flavours, descriptions, dreamy and surreal conversations...it felt like Italo Calvino writing in his most lucid and masterful. The story follows a couple taking a vacation to Oaxaca, Mexico where they explore Mexican cuisine and learn about the sacrificial rites of the Aztecs. The story is about the very intense associations humans build between relationships and food. Food is the zest of life, the aphrodisiac, the source of death and everything in between. I liked the juxtaposition of "eating exotic foods" and the couple devouring one another in their relationship. The wife gets very into talking about cannibalism at some point and the husband himself makes a surprisingly poignant analogy about eating and relationships. It's so hard to explain why this felt profound so I'll just put some quotes here.
And here is one of my favorite lyrical passages from the novel that reminds me how masterful a writer Calvino is.
A King Listens
I got bored with this one and I did not finish it. Basically, some king cannot leave his throne for whatever reason and he spends the whole time listening to sounds around him and Calvino describes the sounds for us.
I feel like this could be a metaphor for something but I think I'm too dumb to understand it. It's 4 pm in the afternoon and I do not have the energy for this because the writing style felt a little less sparkling than in the first story.
The Name, The Nose
Okay, this is a weird one. The story starts off totally normally and then has a HUGE TONAL SHIFT in the middle that gave me whiplash. We get a whimsical little style of storytelling in the beginning with some random dude in France visiting a perfumery under the care of Madame Odile. This dude's delirious in love with some chick he smelled at a party and Madame Odile is saying stuff like, "Describe her scent to me so I can find her!"
And then for entirely no reason at all, suddenly, the narrative shifts into very long paragraphs made up of sentences all running together. I think Italo Calvino was trying to simulate what it feels like to be a pure animal sensing the world entirely through its nose, one scent after another cascading into your mind. The language shifts to crude, almost disgusting and vivid in its recollections of nice smells and bad smells. I'll leave this paragraph for you because I could not make head or tale what was going on. HE DOES NOT USE A SINGLE FULL STOP TWICE IN EACH PARAGRAPH. LET THAT SINK IN. The words run into each other and drone on and on.
I think this is a deliberate and carefully planned change in writing style but I did not like it much
Anyway, the whole story ends abruptly when he discovers that the really "exquisite" smell he smelled on that girl was. The ending was kind of bleak and morbid. I probably won't recommend the last story.
Unless you have a smell fetish or something, the last story won't be really attractive. Don't be surprised. There are people with smell fetishes.
The note at the back really allowed me to fully understand what the whole damn thing was about. Calvino wanted to write a book about the five senses: Taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch. He only managed to finish three stories before he fell ill and died. Hence, this is why we have...
A Jaguar Sun = A story about taste
A King Listens = A story about hearing?? Perhaps? I did not finish this because it got a little boring. It also could be a story about the mind.
The Name, The Nose = Pretty self explanatory. It's a story about smell.
Overall, the only story I liked from this collection was A Jaguar Sun. I didn't like the second and third story.
The book is only about 96 or 56 pages long depending on your edition. I finished the stories within an hour. A person who enjoys short stories might like this.
A Jaguar Sun
The first story was typical Calvino and it is just as dazzling as I expected it to be. The lush language, flavours, descriptions, dreamy and surreal conversations...it felt like Italo Calvino writing in his most lucid and masterful. The story follows a couple taking a vacation to Oaxaca, Mexico where they explore Mexican cuisine and learn about the sacrificial rites of the Aztecs. The story is about the very intense associations humans build between relationships and food. Food is the zest of life, the aphrodisiac, the source of death and everything in between. I liked the juxtaposition of "eating exotic foods" and the couple devouring one another in their relationship. The wife gets very into talking about cannibalism at some point and the husband himself makes a surprisingly poignant analogy about eating and relationships. It's so hard to explain why this felt profound so I'll just put some quotes here.
“We who tear one another apart, pretending not to know it, pretending not to taste flavors anymore.”
“You mean that here—that they need stronger flavors here because they know, because here they ate...”
“The same as at home, even now. Only we no longer know it, no longer dare look, the way they did. For them there was no mystification: the horror was right there, in front of their eyes. They ate as long as there was a bone left to pick clean, and that’s why the flavors...”
“To hide that flavor?” I said, again picking up Salustiano’s chain of hypotheses.
“Perhaps it couldn’t be hidden. Shouldn't be. Otherwise, it was like not eating what they were really eating. Perhaps the other flavors served to enhance that flavor, to give it a worthy background, to honor it.”
There: I was insipid, I thought, without flavor. And the Mexican cuisine, with all its boldness and imagination, was needed if Olivia was to feed on me with satisfaction.
And here is one of my favorite lyrical passages from the novel that reminds me how masterful a writer Calvino is.
I went down, I climbed back up into the light of the jaguar sun—into the sea of the green sap of the leaves. The world spun, I plunged down, my throat cut by the knife of the king-priest, down the high steps onto the forest of tourists with super-8s and usurped, broad-brimmed sombreros. The solar energy coursed along dense networks of blood and chlorophyll; I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting.
A King Listens
I got bored with this one and I did not finish it. Basically, some king cannot leave his throne for whatever reason and he spends the whole time listening to sounds around him and Calvino describes the sounds for us.
I feel like this could be a metaphor for something but I think I'm too dumb to understand it. It's 4 pm in the afternoon and I do not have the energy for this because the writing style felt a little less sparkling than in the first story.
The Name, The Nose
Okay, this is a weird one. The story starts off totally normally and then has a HUGE TONAL SHIFT in the middle that gave me whiplash. We get a whimsical little style of storytelling in the beginning with some random dude in France visiting a perfumery under the care of Madame Odile. This dude's delirious in love with some chick he smelled at a party and Madame Odile is saying stuff like, "Describe her scent to me so I can find her!"
And then for entirely no reason at all, suddenly, the narrative shifts into very long paragraphs made up of sentences all running together. I think Italo Calvino was trying to simulate what it feels like to be a pure animal sensing the world entirely through its nose, one scent after another cascading into your mind. The language shifts to crude, almost disgusting and vivid in its recollections of nice smells and bad smells. I'll leave this paragraph for you because I could not make head or tale what was going on. HE DOES NOT USE A SINGLE FULL STOP TWICE IN EACH PARAGRAPH. LET THAT SINK IN. The words run into each other and drone on and on.
As I say, it’s hard really to smell one girl’s skin, especially when you’re all in a big tangle of bodies, but there beneath me I’m surely smelling a girl’s white skin, a white smell with that special force white has, a slightly mottled skin smell probably dotted with faint or even invisible freckles, a skin that breathes the way a leaf’s pores breathe the meadows, and all the stink in the room keeps its distance from this skin, maybe two inches, maybe two fractions of an inch, because meanwhile I start inhaling this skin everywhere while she sleeps with her face hidden in her arms, her long maybe red hair over her shoulders down her back, her long legs outstretched, cool in the pockets behind the knees, now I really am breathing and smelling nothing but her, who must have felt, still sleeping, that I am smelling her and must not mind, because she rises on her elbows, her face still held down, and from her armpit I move and smell what her breast is like, the tip, and since I’m kind of astride, logically it seems the right moment to push in the direction that makes me happy and I feel she’s happy too, so, half-sleeping, we find a way of lying and agree on how I should lie and how she should now beautifully lie.
I think this is a deliberate and carefully planned change in writing style but I did not like it much
Anyway, the whole story ends abruptly when he discovers that the really "exquisite" smell he smelled on that girl was
Spoiler
the smell of death and he sobs over finding her bloated corpse in a roomUnless you have a smell fetish or something, the last story won't be really attractive. Don't be surprised. There are people with smell fetishes.
topfife's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent short stories, Under The Jaguar Sun especially. Fully reawakened taste, sound and smell in a way that’s easy to forget on a daily basis.
mges's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
3.5, interessante reflexion aber zu viel male gaze, 5, liebe geht mal wieder durch den magen, extrem schöne semantische verbindung, 3, auch interessant aber nicht so flowy
playguru's review against another edition
3.0
Tre racconti per una serie lasciata incompleta sui sensi.
Meraviglioso il primo sull'olfatto: intreccio di tre storie, molto diverse tra loro ma fortemente coinvolgenti nella narrazione e nelle ambientazioni. 5 stelle
Elaborato e forse eccessivamente condito il secondo, sul gusto, con quasi prevedibile finale un po' forzato su toni oscuri. 3/4 stelle
Meno riuscito il terzo e non abbastanza coinvolgente. 3 stelle.
Si tratta, comunque, dell'opera di un sapiente tessitore di trame attraverso l'inanellamento di parole danzanti, roboanti, ficcanti, stimolanti.
Meraviglioso il primo sull'olfatto: intreccio di tre storie, molto diverse tra loro ma fortemente coinvolgenti nella narrazione e nelle ambientazioni. 5 stelle
Elaborato e forse eccessivamente condito il secondo, sul gusto, con quasi prevedibile finale un po' forzato su toni oscuri. 3/4 stelle
Meno riuscito il terzo e non abbastanza coinvolgente. 3 stelle.
Si tratta, comunque, dell'opera di un sapiente tessitore di trame attraverso l'inanellamento di parole danzanti, roboanti, ficcanti, stimolanti.
shiprim's review against another edition
5.0
Calvino enteresan bir yazar, yazdıkları da bence kendisi gibi. Bu ufak ve yarım öykü kitabında da, 5 duyuyu benzetmelerle yaşama aktarmaya çalışmış. Özellikle Meksika'da geçen ve tatm duygusunu anlatan "Jaguar-Güneş Altında" ile bir kralın sarayındaki sessizlikle imtihanını anlatan "Kulak Kesilmiş Bir Kral" çok güzel -ki bunda da bariz şekilde duyma duyusunu kaleme alıyor.
christensen5's review against another edition
4.0
4.
Sensuous prose, in the most literal sense. Calvino fires off three intense and memorable short stories.
Under the Jaguar Sun: An intimate, thrilling, almost carnal portrait of appetite, straying into wanton and forbidden desire.
A King Listens: Intricate, neurotic and layered with imagery; Calvino works a wild and delightful magic with his metaphors, but without overindulging. Just a masterpiece, I read it twice in succession.
The Name, The Nose An intoxicating, disorientating, nigh-orgiastic medley. Quite thrilling!
Sensuous prose, in the most literal sense. Calvino fires off three intense and memorable short stories.
Under the Jaguar Sun: An intimate, thrilling, almost carnal portrait of appetite, straying into wanton and forbidden desire.
A King Listens: Intricate, neurotic and layered with imagery; Calvino works a wild and delightful magic with his metaphors, but without overindulging. Just a masterpiece, I read it twice in succession.
The Name, The Nose An intoxicating, disorientating, nigh-orgiastic medley. Quite thrilling!
isr's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25