If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

“Calvino teases again and again the pleasure of opening a new book. He casts you as the ‘traveller’ of the title, repeatedly showing up in virgin territory, new terrain, and there’s real excitement in that. This is a metaphor for the reader, who is always a tourist in the territory of their reading, never an immigrant. But then you often do want to know what happens. You want resolution. So the book puts an interesting strain on you. It frustrates the inherent expectation of prosecuting the plot that has been set up for you. The plot becomes a metaplot, grounded in interstitial drama of trying to piece together into a coherent whole what is by nature fragmentary and incomplete.” Read more...

The Best Metaphysical Thrillers

Greg Jackson, Novelist