«You are going to start reading Kyriakos' review on Italo Calvino's book If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Relax. Concentrate. Find a comfortable position. Grab a refreshing beverage and begin.»
That's how Italo Calvino's book begins. Experimental, postmodernist, metafictional, and quirky. It was a book under my radar for at least five years. I book in my wishlist. The most anticipated book of the year.
The disappointment of the year. . .
While a university student in Manchester, UK, I discovered this book and always something else was taking its place (priorities, other books) and I was postponing the reading experience for four years. I finally found it for less than €5 on BookDepository and it was finally mine! It would have waited one more year to be read. The first book of August 2019, the month of my birthday. I wanted to start the month with a great read. I started the month with a great disappointment.
It's like meeting a beautiful girl online and when you finally meet her five years later you discover she is a hag with a mole and a moustache. That's the amount of disappointment I had. Now you will ask: What disappointed you so much that you had to use the word three times.
The book consists of 12 numbered chapters (1,2,3) where the protagonist is you, the reader; and ten titled chapters, all parts of the book you are trying to read, but has missing pages.
I started reading the book excited, and in the 1st numbered chapter which is in 2nd person narration, because the protagonist is you, the reader, and the author tells you that you are going to read his book. The first titled chapter (If on a Winter's Night a Traveller) has a noir atmosphere and it is set at a train station. But it abruptly ends because it's time for the 2nd numbered chapter where the author tells you that now you are well in the story and you are ready for the second chapter.
But, Oh woe! you discover that what follows page 32 is page 17, it's not a trick but a printing error! You have to go back to the bookstore and take a new copy. But once you return with your new copy home, you discover that it is an entirely different version. Thus we arrive in the second titled chapter (Outside the town of Malbork) Completely unrelated with the previous chapter, ALSO abruptly ended by the 3rd number chapter when once again annoyingly the author interrupts the story.
And this goes on and on until the end. I felt bored by the 3rd or 4th numbered chapter. It certainly has a great premise and a very original structured BUT I was relieved when I finished this book.
I felt I was reading the unedited, unfinished manuscripts, of ten unrelated short stories, being interrupted by a know-it-all editor that talks to you and guides you through this marsh of manuscripts telling you in a patronising way what to do next.
Maybe having set the bar of this book pretty high, since it was on my wishlist for four years and getting disappointed in the fifth was what what made me dislike this book.
Of course Calvino undoubtedly is a great master of the craft, but this book annoyed the shit out of me. Sorry....more
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