#Italo calvino baron in the trees full#

I know If on a WinterвЂ™s Night a Traveler is probably CalvinoвЂ™s most famous novel, and itвЂ™s worth tackling. With titles like those, I must admit IвЂ™m a little curiousвЂ¦ The Verdict: Enjoyable But it would have been a different novel, and not necessarily a better one.ДЇun fact: Apparently The Baron in the Trees is the second in CalvinoвЂ™s Our Ancestors trilogy, the first and third installments of which are titled The Cloven Viscount and The Nonexistent Knight. In short, a record of his life in his own words. What I missed most, I think, were the particulars of CosimoвЂ™s life: how he managed his daily affairs, what he thought about, how he saw his situation and the world around him. Much of what he shares he admits comes from hearsay or from his brotherвЂ™s constantly shifting stories.

But BiagioвЂ™s view into CosimoвЂ™s life is necessarily limited. Biagio is able to share insights and fill in details from the wider world that CosimoвЂ™s perspectiveВ would have rendered impossible (or at least rather difficult). CalvinoвЂ™s use of Biagio as narrator allows a more objective view of Cosimo, certainly. My one complaint isnвЂ™t even a complaint, really itвЂ™s more of a curiosity or a wish. The Baron in the Trees, on the other hand, was quite readable, and I whizzed through it. ItвЂ™s good, but it takes some concentration to read. If on a WinterвЂ™s Night a Traveler is rather convoluted and trippy, like you keep walking through door after door until youвЂ™re not really sure which way is up or which plot line youвЂ™re in. I was pleasantly surprised by how readable the novel is. From his perch, he helps his neighbors, furthers his education, corresponds with the great minds of Europe, solves problems for himself and others, and even conducts romances. He engenders respect as well as curiosity, both in the reader and in his fellow characters. HeвЂ™s principled, earnest, kind, a touch eccentric, and just a little naive sometimes. In fact, itвЂ™s set in the past, in the very normal Italian community of Ombrosa, and peopled with the sorts of characters youвЂ™d expect to find in such a story - except that one of them lives exclusively in the trees.Д¬osimo is both an enigma and a likable guy. CalvinoвЂ™s is not a fantasy world, nor is it some future Earth.

#Italo calvino baron in the trees full#

Not because itвЂ™s a rollicking tale or full of tricks and antics or anything like that, but because it stretches the limits of what weвЂ™re used to in just one way.

He makes you complicit, inviting you, too, to suspend your disbelief. (In that respect - though not really in any others - he reminds me of one of my favorite authors, Jose Saramago.) What I like in particular is the way in which Calvino approaches his off-the-wall topics as though they were completely commonplace and not at all surprising. It seems to me that Italo Calvino had one of those delightfully creative literary minds whose premises alone make their novels worth reading. Relying on his own observations, the stories of others, and the tales he hears from Cosimo himself, BiagioВ assembles the story of his brotherвЂ™s arboreal existence as his own life draws toward its close. What does a life lived in the trees look like for an eighteenth-century nobleman - a proper baron, once his father has died and passed the title on? That is what BiagioВ sets out to chronicle. In no time, this impulsive whim has calcified into a resolution, and from that day forward, Cosimo never again sets foot on the earth. It is a disagreement over eating snails that sends eight-year-old BiagioвЂ™s older brother, Cosimo, up into the trees in the backyard of the familyвЂ™s estate. IвЂ™d previously read (and been rather bemused and charmed by) If on a WinterвЂ™s Night a Traveler by Calvino (which I never got around to reviewing, sadly).

The version I read was translated by Archibald Colquhoun. The Baron in the Trees is the first book I read from my Classics Club list, as chosen for me by the recent spin.