If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
Rating: 3.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2017-06-27
It’s a really cool idea. The story involves you, the reader, buying and starting to read “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino, only to be interrupted after the first chapter. It’s extremely meta (which I enjoy), and most of the themes and questions it raises have to do with reading, writing and the relationship between author and reader.
It’s also partly puzzle:
- The plot is revealed through multiple narrators in multiple levels of narration (e.g. one narrator reading the journal of another narrator)
- There are connections between the various sub-stories
- There are connections between what happens in the framing story and what happens in the sub-stories
However, I’m giving it a three because I could not bring myself to enjoy large stretches of the book. I found it confusing, meandering and drawn-out. But I think this could change if I ever come back to the book, preferably with a notebook which which to keep track of everything!