You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
avesmaria 's review for:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
This book is, in summation, about a reader who keeps trying to read a story but is continuously interrupted. The style is difficult to describe so I might limit myself to a short, descriptive list: self-referential, post-modern, intellectual, breaking the 4th wall.
The character of the reader within the book - and at the same time you, the reader - begin but do not finish several different stories throughout the course of the novel as the reader seeks to uncover an uncorrupted text of the first story. The titles of the stories (spoiler), when read in sequence, form a sort of prose-poem that I felt could have been a commentary on some of the grander themes addressed in the book. I got pretty bored with the recurring semi-pornographic love scenes, which are centered on male pleasure and the male gaze (not that fun to read as a woman in the 21st century. The whole book felt like it was written for a man's consumption). I felt that the strong identification of the reader (both the character and the real-life reader) as a male pursuing a female was alienating and interrupted the most elegant aspect of the book's "meta" nature.
That being said, the self-referential structure and the book's deliberately laborious plot pacing frame an interesting meditation on the nature of reading and books.
The character of the reader within the book - and at the same time you, the reader - begin but do not finish several different stories throughout the course of the novel as the reader seeks to uncover an uncorrupted text of the first story. The titles of the stories (spoiler), when read in sequence, form a sort of prose-poem that I felt could have been a commentary on some of the grander themes addressed in the book. I got pretty bored with the recurring semi-pornographic love scenes, which are centered on male pleasure and the male gaze (not that fun to read as a woman in the 21st century. The whole book felt like it was written for a man's consumption). I felt that the strong identification of the reader (both the character and the real-life reader) as a male pursuing a female was alienating and interrupted the most elegant aspect of the book's "meta" nature.
That being said, the self-referential structure and the book's deliberately laborious plot pacing frame an interesting meditation on the nature of reading and books.