Katherine Tesi

There is no doubt in my mind that I’m going to be quite a fan of this book. Just within the first two chapters of Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler, I already want to read the next forty pages. When I learned that the book was simply a compilation of the beginning chapters of ten different stories, I initially thought it would be a bit annoying to read. However, the explanatory pages between the chapters pull the reader in further and almost persuade the reader to continue on. Even though there is never a full story given and no plot fulfilled, I still enjoy the small bit of each story that is there. Because of the short length of each chapter, there isn’t enough time to develop characters either, and even this aspect I find entertaining. I think that style that this book is written in allows a reader to fill in the remaining gaps just the way they would like. I’m unsure whether this trend will continue, but I noticed that the use of the characters of both “I” and “you” are used in all of the sections. This aspect is particularly interesting because both “I” and “you” are not commonly found in most writing of this kind.