The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Italo Calvino

[Diane]

I read this version: The Path to the Spiders' Nests which has a slightly different title

Rating: 3.5 stars

This is Italo Calvino's first novel, written when he was only 23. It tells the coming of age story of an Italian boy who becomes involved with a band of Italian resistance partisans during WWII.

This is my second Calvino story, and it reads much differently than the other book of his I read, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which is much more experimental. This one is structured like a traditional novel.

Overall, it is a decent book and a nice insight into the history of the time and place, but it certainly is nothing spectacular. It is interesting to note that the author had regrets about writing this book.

[Gail]

Unlike the others books by Calvino I have read, his first novel is not metafiction, modern or experimental. It does have a number of themes that Calvino will return to in his other work, in particular the nature of place and how one responses to it and is estranged from it. I read the revised edition which has a 5 part preface in which the author admits he is somewhat embarrassed by this book as it is too sentimental and too romantic for his adult tastes. (Romantic in the sense of awareness of an idealized version of the world, not romantic in a theme of love).
The book is an investigation into the nature of the resistance movement in Italy. Rather than describing it as heroic and fighting for an ideal of freedom or communism, Calvino introduces us to a collection of men who are all there for different reasons and are motivated by different desires. Some are communists, others have no where else to go, some simply want revenge and some want only something they believe is theirs back again, although this something is not necessarily a country....the author actually says it can be as simple as a cow.
Although the setting is the partisan camps, the actual character development and plot circle around Pin, our main character. He is a young boy who never had a childhood having been brought up by his prostitute sister. Pin badly wants the companionship of the adults and yet does not know how to interact with them in any way which would win over their friendship. He makes fun of them cruelly and sings romantic love songs to them but always ends up feeling alone. In a strange way, this book is a bit of a coming of age story with the partisan resistance being only a highly dramatic backdrop to the story of a little boy forced to live in a very adult world.