The narrative perspective of this book was completely unexpected to me, and this is the first time I’ve read a book where the author narrates from a second-person point of view, which definitely gave me a very strong gateway to connect with the author. This was a very new and creative reading experience for me to have over the years!

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller continually draws attention to the act of reading a book. Appropriately, the protagonist of the novel is the “reader,” whom the narrator also refers to as “you”. While the novel initially seems to break the wall and address its real-world audience directly, the narrative eventually reveals that the “you” in the story is actually a specific character – a single man who is obsessed with reading the story from beginning to end, and whose actions are often driven by the attractive woman he encounters. The novel refuses to end any of its 10 stories and leaves other mysteries in its wake.

The train that appears in this novel caught my attention. To me, the train symbolizes reading as a journey that can take the reader to new and unexpected places. The symbolism of the train portrays reading as a linear, guided experience-at least on the surface. The nominal story focuses on an unnamed narrator who somehow arrives at a remote train station but seems reluctant to reveal who he is, why he came to the station, or what he did before arriving there. The narrator keeps pointing out that the world around him is an illusion and that you, the reader, can only see things when the author specifically points them out to you. These details draw attention to how the reader, like a train on a set of guide tracks laid down by the author, has no choice but to move on and observe the lives of the characters moving on the defined tracks. Nonetheless, as the rest of the novel makes clear, just because reading is a linear experience does not mean that a story has to be a straightforward journey from beginning to end. The train in the first story may give a sense of continuity and forward momentum, but the abrupt ending of the first story confirms that the novel as a whole will not be a linear train ride. Later in the novel, the reader is on a train and thinks he catches a glimpse of Lyudmila on a train going in the opposite direction, only to wake up and realize that the whole experience was a dream. Shortly afterward, the reader marries Ludmilla, contradicting the dream of the train in the opposite direction and suggesting that, despite the powerful force of the train appearing to move in one direction, sometimes the notion of a linear journey is nothing more than an illusion.

Question for Discussion:

Beginning: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.” (3)

Ending: “And you say, “Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.” (260)

What an interesting way of writing a novel! The novel begins with the reader starting to read and ends with the reader finishing the book. While that said, the chapters in between is in bits and pieces. However….does this entire novel somehow give you an overall feeling/sense of completeness?