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[26th book of 2021. No artist for this review, instead, the tarot cards that illustrate the novel throughout.]

I'm a big Calvino fan and I'd like to say I've read a lot of him now. My favourites remain firmly as Invisible Cities and The Baron in the Trees, the former being the novel I think is a must-read for any fans of literary fiction—it's one of the books I recommend the most in that sense. This is one I've had my eye on for a long time. In an interview with "The Paris Review", Calvino talks a little about this novel, he calls it "the most calculated of all I have written. Nothing in it is left to chance. I don’t believe chance can play a role in my literature" and that "the architecture is the book itself. By then I had reached a level of obsession with structure such that I almost became crazy about it." He speaks fondly.



I've never used tarot cards, nor have I ever had the burning desire to do so. I remember my friend I. (I'll just call him Lan) once told me his soon-to-be-wife was a fan of tarot cards, and that her and her mother used to sit at their kitchen table with them. Lan would leave the house. It surprised me because Lan is a strong atheist, a man of serious black-and-white, of Occam's Razor, of general disbelief in most walks of life. And Lan is a talker; he used to drive me back to my uni house every week (a half an hour drive or so) from A. to C. In these journeys, in his Honda Jazz, bumping along in the pitch black (save his headlights) he would talk on a great many subjects: fighting, mutual friends, marketing (his personal interest), religion, ghosts and other spectres and his then-girlfriend's views on them, his time as a man my age (he is ten years older), etc. I would rarely say more than ten words, I would just sit with my hands in my lap watching the white lines disappearing under the Honda's bonnet and listening to him speak.

But—the novel. For all Calvino talks about the structure, which is no doubt highly plotted, it appears fairly simple in the beginning. A number of travellers converge in a castle and find themselves mute somehow by their entering. They do not know each other. There is a deck of tarot cards and slowly, one by one, the travellers tell their stories using them. It's an interesting concept. The tarot cards that are being used are lined in the margin, so one can look at the card that is being held forwards by the speaking traveller and then "hear" the related tale. It is a tale of gold, devils, swords, kings, and in the end, a number of characters arise too, Hamlet, Macbeth, Doctor Faust. The end of the novel descends a little into madness, and is just as intriguing as the rest of it. But for all it is intriguing, I did find my attention wandering. The repetitiveness of each traveller telling their story slowly began to wear me out. It is beautifully written, at least.



And what does it all mean? Their stories become mixed, tarot cards are used more than once so suddenly there become crossovers... meanings are lost, interpretations are changed. The whole novel seems to be a commentary on how we tell stories, how are stories relate to all other stories, how they can be lost in "translation", and how every story for every person isn't the same. The themes that arise are brilliant. It had me wondering, of all the stories Lan told me on those car journeys home, what would someone else have heard if they were in that passenger seat and not me?