If On A Winter's Night A Traveler

Italo Calvino

Order from Borders

Reviewed by Larry of the Borders staff in Oak Brook, Illinois: "Despite having read far too many overwhelmingly great books, I still someday hope to be an aspiring writer."

What more appropriate reading can there be for a dark winter's night than Calvino's masterpiece "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler"?

With a level of integration and interconnection akin to James Joyce but an ease of style along the lines of Anderson or Hemingway, this novel comes off as both extremely accessible and very rewarding at the same time. It's a rare work that can be held up to a harshly critical light without its cracks and flaws showing through; this though, is such a work of art. Best of all, it's a true reader's novel.

"If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" is a grand story about books (and bookstores), readers (and readers of the opposite sex), authors, truth, fiction, and how they all interplay within our daily lives. At the same time, it is (as you'll see in the last 40 pages or so) one of those books that is pedagogical enough to point out your own inadequacies as a reader. Calvino covers all sorts of genres and milieus associated with the world and history of literature, so it's almost natural to focus on what happens on the most basic level in the book, but then you'll miss the real story and the more astounding depth of the novel.

Those who enjoy the magical realism expertly demonstrated by Borges and Garcia Marquez will find a congenial writer in Calvino and more specifically, in this -- his classic -- "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler".