Micah's review
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
Micah's review
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Micah's review
rating:
I have been reading Calvino regularly for the last few years, but it wasn't until last month that I read what is most certainly one of his finest works - If on a winter's night a traveler. In the novel, Calvino manages to pierce to the core of what it means to be a reader. He examines our reading habits. Tests our patience. Intentionally frustrates our expectations. And all the while, we can't help but turn the page, reveling in our own indictment. If on a winter's night a traveler consists of ten novels cut short yet linked together by our compulsive need to experience some sense of closure in the reading experience. Calvino compels us to read these fragments with great interest by building a sense of unresolved tension in both the fragments and the intermediary sections of the novel that are addressed to "you." "Your" desire to know what happens in the previous fragment propels you into a ravenous reading of the next fragment. But, being a fragment, this section f...more
