InvasiveThoughts.com

There has always been the old adage that a writer is worthless if he has no audience, and that has never been more so the case than when I decided to pick up Italo Calvino's 1979 novel, If on a winter's night: a traveler.

Never before have I been so tested as a reader than in this book.  It is ten, nay, eleven novels, or — more to the point — novelettes, in one.  Narration switches from second to third person every other chapter — as a hero/heroine are on a chase, of sorts, to finish a mysteriously changing story. 

This book is not for the novice reader; in fact, it is for an advanced or expert reader, as it challenges one to decide what matters to them in a book.  There is a scene in a library in which different readers talk about what a book means to them and how this relates to life.  For instance, one reader remarks that each story we read is but a part of one big story, that everything we read is connected. Another remarks that even if you reread a book, the story has changed, even though the words haven't, but your interpretation and your growth as a reader has changed, and thus the story may take a different shape.

Another fascinating aspect of this book is the mini-stories littered throughout, each one incomplete, leaving the reader frustrated; but also leaving the reader to finish their own story. And littered about are some telling philosophies and clichéd characters. I felt that I was in the middle of an episode of Ray Bradbury Presents, at times.  One of my favorite lines from the book is “The world is so complicated, tangled, and overloaded that to see into it with any clarity you must prune and prune.” This line speaks to me in volumes, as I'm always trying to find my path in this world by eliminating useless debris that obstacles bring.