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buddhafish 's review for:
The Cloven Viscount
by Italo Calvino
55th book of 2020.
A very bizarre, short novel from Calvino, published some five years after his debut, Path to the Spider's Nest. The latter being a realist novel about the War, this is more reminiscent of Calvino's later postmodern work. The best way to explain this is by calling it a fairy tale, or a myth; it is told in that way, quite simply. It is about a Viscount who is blown perfectly in half by a cannonball, but lives. Without any spoilers, the surviving half returns from the War against the Turks. The coolest thing about the book is how wherever he goes he cuts things perfectly in half, so one finds halved mushrooms on the floor, halved pears in the trees, halved octopuses on the shoreline...
A very bizarre, short novel from Calvino, published some five years after his debut, Path to the Spider's Nest. The latter being a realist novel about the War, this is more reminiscent of Calvino's later postmodern work. The best way to explain this is by calling it a fairy tale, or a myth; it is told in that way, quite simply. It is about a Viscount who is blown perfectly in half by a cannonball, but lives. Without any spoilers, the surviving half returns from the War against the Turks. The coolest thing about the book is how wherever he goes he cuts things perfectly in half, so one finds halved mushrooms on the floor, halved pears in the trees, halved octopuses on the shoreline...