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A review by deegee24
The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino
3.0
These two short novels, along with The Baron in the Trees, are part of Calvino's Our Ancestors trilogy from the 1950s. They represent Calvino turning away from the neorealism of The Path to the Nest of Spiders, his first novel, to incorporate elements of fantasy and folklore. This is still not the mature Calvino, but if you like his later works, they are worth exploring.
The Nonexistent Knight--3 1/2 stars. The last of the trilogy to be published and perhaps the most successful. It's kind of like Monty Python meets Cervantes. Characters from history (Charlemagne) and myth (the Knights of the Holy Grail) intermingle in a whimsical fable set during the crusades, narrated by a cloistered nun. The story is somewhat dated due to Calvino's casual male chauvinism, which makes the female characters less interesting than they could have been.
The Cloven Viscount--2 stars. The first and worst of the trilogy. Calvino starts out with an utterly absurd idea, that the main character was literally divided in half by cannon fire and both halves miraculously survived to live independent lives, one good and one evil. OK, fine. But Calvino does very little with this premise throughout the meandering plot and all the characters are just shallow social types. The humor is very strained. It reminds me of bad Salman Rushdie (who was of course influenced by Calvino). The book is only 100 pages long but it was a chore to finish. It might have worked better as a 20-page story or children's book, like something by William Steig.
The Nonexistent Knight--3 1/2 stars. The last of the trilogy to be published and perhaps the most successful. It's kind of like Monty Python meets Cervantes. Characters from history (Charlemagne) and myth (the Knights of the Holy Grail) intermingle in a whimsical fable set during the crusades, narrated by a cloistered nun. The story is somewhat dated due to Calvino's casual male chauvinism, which makes the female characters less interesting than they could have been.
The Cloven Viscount--2 stars. The first and worst of the trilogy. Calvino starts out with an utterly absurd idea, that the main character was literally divided in half by cannon fire and both halves miraculously survived to live independent lives, one good and one evil. OK, fine. But Calvino does very little with this premise throughout the meandering plot and all the characters are just shallow social types. The humor is very strained. It reminds me of bad Salman Rushdie (who was of course influenced by Calvino). The book is only 100 pages long but it was a chore to finish. It might have worked better as a 20-page story or children's book, like something by William Steig.