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A review by casparb
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
5.0
'...Polo answers, 'Traveling, you realise that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name.'
The above quote hopefully demonstrates the quiet beauty of Calvino's prose. I think much of this arises from a tendency to understate.
A review is (for me) a manner of infraction - so this is a little daunting. I love this book, and refuse to muddy the waters through redundant use of terms such as 'kaleidoscopic' or 'concentric'.
Invisible Cities will invite comparisons to Escher, Scheherazade, Borges, and Dali. Something about this frustrates me - perhaps to do with the impulse to compartmentalise. But I can't deny there is a validity to these comparisons.
Calvino always invites the reader (sometimes teasingly) to participate in his narratives, and I think this novel is perhaps the key example of this. Read it. I promise you won't regret doing so.
The above quote hopefully demonstrates the quiet beauty of Calvino's prose. I think much of this arises from a tendency to understate.
A review is (for me) a manner of infraction - so this is a little daunting. I love this book, and refuse to muddy the waters through redundant use of terms such as 'kaleidoscopic' or 'concentric'.
Invisible Cities will invite comparisons to Escher, Scheherazade, Borges, and Dali. Something about this frustrates me - perhaps to do with the impulse to compartmentalise. But I can't deny there is a validity to these comparisons.
Calvino always invites the reader (sometimes teasingly) to participate in his narratives, and I think this novel is perhaps the key example of this. Read it. I promise you won't regret doing so.