Back Cover : Reader, have you ever dreamed of being the hero of a novel by Italo Calvino? Have you ever imagined becoming an author, librarian, university professor? The journey begins here: not a story, but ten sublime and breathtaking adventures, you'll be involved. One of the most ingenious novels, the most unusual, this magical triangle that links author, characters and reader.
Book of the Month - Double reading: JB & Emmanuel
At the sound of the flute, seduced by a back cover promising and by the relative difficulty in obtaining the book, we wanted the first page of a great story.
The book is constructed as a "project literary, alternating narrative "monitoring" cut into sections and chapters of the first unfinished often sewn to your main line. Add a touch ahead of interaction author / reader ("You drive, drive ..."), and some fantastic touches, the idea is quite interesting and quite ambitious. In your books ...
Notice JB:
"The book you are the hero" ... accompanied by a cover bears a dragon, a dungeon and often adventurous, very brave teenagers of the 1990s may remember being. Following the birth of literary conscience, was perhaps marked by "Ants" and its sequels, and, by extension, you may have read the "book travel" (Bernard Werber). At 15 or 30 years, and although the sensitivity is different, the player that I like to think that this is his book, but he does not like to be "You Drive" tu "or be heard in a tone and didactic. Mr. Calvino may tend to think he knows his future readers and that therefore our ability to dissect a fatherly feelings and habits (The story "classic" of the work tells the story of a player who begins a book that is very interesting but the rest is missing). Humble-the-board author-who-don't-read-this-ever-lines, the personality of the bed is not always the mirror of what he will as a "player", the calmer of us may be the most virulent of the readers. Reading, like writing without doubt, an act often selfish, a little voyeuristic and dreamlike, and you do not like seeing his little kingdom collapsing blows of tu and ultra-marked paths.
If you always follow, as this reader-protagonist in search of the rest of his book, the author inserts some sort of "early" chapters, stories and quasi-independent with no real link with the main story of book, which-s'-complete-at-end-of-20-pages-but-we-should-have-wanted-to-go, we are now similar to the "hero" of the main narrative. Given the quality of some of these early stages, it is certain that we can only satisfy us that the sequence was truncated: some are pleasant (in the station's history, revolution), some honest smile (The tepid erotic story Japanese), the general level is quite poor ... As we turn the pages, and we see unfold over the history of the "main" particularly complex drawling imitation ( Spotted an end "pseudo" original), the desire to commit the irreparable, skip pages, is strong ...
To read or not?
Not ...
This book is a concept, a structure that tends to scrutinize the reader as he turns the pages, and has not for him literary talent necessary to reduce this unpleasant feeling. We are the judges-buyers-readers, do not deny. A snub would end 'hit' here we feel attacked. Unfortunately for me it missed a concept which can not but welcome the research to make "original."
Notice Emmanuel
The pitch and the title of this book by Calvino could only enchanters. They also had their effect because they had allowed this novel exhausted pipped at the post the very famous in The Great Gatsby voting by readers of the blog for the choice of the book of the month of February!
Having recently read and enjoyed Cloven Viscount I was even more eager to discover this new novel by Calvino, whose language and intelligent fantasy completely conquered me.
So ominous disappointment that gripped me when I glimpsed the first line a sort of pre-Book of Travel , whose book had crystallized deep void in my memory as as an intolerable tu drive.
The discovery of the different beginnings of stories, which are the salt of the book, I though for a moment a door ajar on the novel by Calvino could have written: a kind of hybrid between novel and brilliant essay, which would have talked of writing (how one creates a story that makes you want in a few words), reading (When and how do we scale the initial curiosity to this irrepressible greed that grips us from reading a good story) at the same time as the interaction between two. Maybe so I imagined at that time a sort of courage that the author agrees to "burn out" potential ten novels just to write one. I must emphasize in particular that I found none of the "first chapter" really bad, some are more my style (the detective story that opens the book, the pseudo-Mafia novel, the strange half-fantasy novel that begins ringtones ...) than others, but all I seem to incipits valid for a novel of the genre they represent (even the Japanese-style erotic novel seemed nice).
Still, the chapters on how to make the link, even those that would enlighten the reader of all the stories cleverly linking them aborted, are quickly succeeded by dint of ridiculous twists, endless digressions, and exuberance nonsensical, frankly bored me. The overall result is therefore very disappointing because even the introductions which I emphasized quality above, eventually seem meaningless in the midst of this jumble of ramblings of a trivial nature. To give the final impression that Calvino wrote his book in mind with the idea of a form (a book that would bring together the beginnings of stories linked by all-means-) rather than a substantive (a book about the exposure of a story from the perspective of the reader, but also what the writer). And that's a shame.
Read or not?
No. At least I've read a lot better Calvino ( Cloven Viscount ) worth well over the trip. But this is not all the more annoying that we frankly feel that the author (which we know the talent) was let go during the writing of this book, resting on a reputation and ease of pen, and betting on the originality to lay a book loosely mall when he could make his masterpiece.
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