If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Paperback)

Never have I read a book that communicates with and understands its reader so well. Writers like Nabokov and Pynchon like to have fun with their readers by posing literary puzzles, but here Calvino empathizes with the avid reader's feelings of frustration from interruptions, expectations, academic blathering, and personal efforts to reflect on literature.

The protagonist of this novel is none other than you yourself, the reader. The novel is about the protagonist's (i.e., your) attempt to finish reading the novel that you have started. However, problems keep cropping up, obstructing you from your goal: misprintings, mixups, interruptions, paramilitary operations, incarceration. Joining you in your quest is Ludmilla, a woman you met in the bookstore and whom you would like to date. Ludmilla has a sister, Lotaria, a feminist who thinks literature should be used to further her polemic agenda and represents the kind of "ideological cheerleading" for which critic Harold Bloom has so much disdain. Ludmilla, on the other hand, represents the perfect passive reader who reads for purely escapist purposes.

The novel's structure is entirely original and somewhat difficult to describe. It consists of two sets of alternating chapters; one set narrates your search for the missing remainder of the novel, and the other set consists of fragments of other novels you mistakenly pick up in your search. Each of these "other" novels is a brilliant piece of writing in its own right, each by a different fictitious author and with a distinctive plot and style. Just as you're becoming engrossed in whatever novel you're reading at a certain time, another interruption occurs, forcing you to resume your worldwide odyssey.

This may sound like a frustrating reading experience, but it's actually a lot of fun, as Calvino demonstrates that starting a new "novel" saves an old plot thread from wearing out. And just when things seem to start spinning out of control for the hapless protagonist (i.e., you, remember?), Calvino brings it all together in a narrative masterstroke that summarizes what all fiction is really about, which hasn't changed much since ancient times: it is simply about telling a story that hasn't happened in real life.

It takes a very skillful writer to create a protagonist that can make direct contact with the reader. I've read more novels then I care to remember that attempted to pull this off and couldn't. But here, it's like, oh I don't know, we're handed a puzzle. A puzzle in which each individual piece is beautiful. There are so many dazzling images, brilliant colors, and something about the way they fit together is just radiant. But it feels like, as those pieces fall into place, the whole might be more than we can take. There is so much to process, but there is no question as to whether you have to continue.

Calvino manages to create a heady novel that is both intellectually stimulating and entertaining. You will relish every moment of following the threads of the broken novels within and you will long to find the protagonist in your favorite bookstore to discuss it with. This is one of those books that will make you change the way you think, that will change you in general, and you'll never be able to look at reading in quite the same way again. And then, don't stop here, at this one novel, read everything of Calvino's that you can find.