Book Review: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler & One Hundred Names For Love

Going to review my book club books together since I wasn't an overwhelming fan of either of them. (Also, I thought it would be polite to save my dissection of these books until after discussing them semi-drunkenly with some fabulous ladies! Hello ladies!)

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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

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This book is not an easy read and I dare anyone to defy me on that. It's hard to maintain your focus and the pronouns will make your head spin. Not to mention that there are at least eleven different plots contained within the covers of this tale. 

Seriously, Arthur Dent had a better grasp on the Universe than  I did on this plot.

It's originally written in Italian, so I'm willing to bet that some of the difficulty I had was in an overly snobbish translation, but this book is about a Reader (is it you?) and an Other Reader (she gets a name, Ludmilla) who cross paths after discovering that the latest work by Italo Calvino they began reading is incomplete. The subsequent attempts to attain a copy to finish the story are all met without success and only succeed in giving the Reader an additional nine stories which are also incomplete to add to his frustration. Every chapter is followed by the story in question and for a long time I didn't realize that the chapters were actually forming a cohesive plot. 

Oh, so this is going somewhere...

It is funny at times and the ending did have a moment of sharp wit that really thrilled me. Several of the incomplete stories are also very fascinating and hold a lot of promise that never gets fulfilled (obviously). I will never be recommending this book to anyone, unless someone comes to me desperately requesting something more brain-bending than Inception. Although, I do think someone should turn this into a very funny and slightly weird film. With Martin Freeman as the Reader, he just does adorably befuddled so well.

UPDATE: This book has progressively grown on me in the months since reading. Having read some more Italian authors since then, I've discovered that they are all just wonderfully weird. I now recommend this book quite often.

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One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing by Diane Ackerman

Not anything I would ever have picked up one my own and it never exactly won me over. I'm sure this is meant to be a lovely analysis of what a stroke can do to a family, but Diane Ackerman's account of the events surrounding and following her husband's, fellow author Paul West, stroke read more like a series of musings on language. I should also mention that I had absolutely emotional reaction to her words, me who cries at everything, nothing was stirred within me.

The author is a deft hand at the art of writing, but I think this would have made a much more impressive essay than a 300 page book. Just saying.

Book Review: The Snow Child

Despite its standing on the bestseller lists, I doubt I would have ever picked this book up if my sister hadn't gifted it to me with rave reviews that sounded something like "best book I've read in years!!!!". It's not that it looks like a bad book, but I spent 2012 thoroughly engrossed in fantasy and most of it rereads of my favorite series so I haven't been in the right mindset for a more literary book. I am so so so glad that this ended up on my to-be-read shelf. And my sister was right, this is one of the best books I've read in years. Probably the best bit of literary fiction I have read since The Poisonwood Bible over a decade ago, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey is going into my permanent collection for sure.

(Image via Goodreads)

This book is chocked full of raw emotion. From the very first page of the very first chapter right up to the very last page of the epilogue this book made me feel things. Powerful things. Overall it's a bittersweet book; I've heard it called sad, but I don't think that's quite right, there is happiness and new beginnings to celebrate after all. But if you are at all emotional, so human, if you're human, be prepared for some tears. I was absolutely sobbing, but I do cry at almost every emotion.

The story is set in 1920s Alaska and follows Mabel and her husband Jack as they attempt to save their homestead and their marriage from collapse. In a moment of pure, completely out of character whimsy (there's a lot of whimsical-ness in this story) Mabel starts a snowball fight with Jack that culminates with the creation of a snowman they have shaped to look like a little girl. The next morning, the snow child is destroyed and Jack glimpses her bright red hat and mittens on a flesh-and-blood child running wild in the nearby forest. The journey that follows touches many lives and teaches Mabel and Jack a lot about themselves and each other.

The snow child folktale from Russia and eastern Europe is woven beautifully throughout. The Alaskan wilderness is as much a character as it is a setting. And the plot is completely unpredictable; I'm rarely surprised at the culmination of a tale and I was in the dark on this one until the very end. All I can say is Eowyn Ivey, congratulations, this is magic.

Read this one for sure.