A review by blueberryhotel
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

this book pulled me in like a block of cement dropped into the harbor, then the waters immediately became far too murky for me to stay immersed in the experience. in other words, the concept behind this book is incredibly interesting and attention-grabbing, but i had a lot of difficulty remaining attentive because of calvino’s excessively verbose prose. there were a lot of really long, hard to follow sentences that were made even harder to follow by the fact that he went into extensive philosophical and immaterial tangents. it took me a lot longer to finish this book than i would’ve liked because i kept getting caught up on difficult passages. anyway, the plot itself is one of the most inventive i’ve ever read, and it was very satisfying to unravel little mysteries only to discover they’d transformed into more complex ones. i just wish i was more engaged so i could have paid even better attention to all the little details calvino weaves together. 

also, if you think about it, this book is basically a sophisticated iteration of a self-insert fic. lol