Invisible Cities

This book was pretty short but consisted of so much poetic narrative that I really did find it intriguing. I love writing that is in prose poetry and is done well - it's difficult but it can be done. 

I found this book after reading "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" and found it in the Waterstones outside the Birmingham Literature Festival Venue. To be honest, I liked the bookshop more than the festival (that's because I got a discount!)

Also, remember to check out the Vlog Promo guys. It's very important to me - and I really do hope you enjoy my scrub-ups in 2017 :)


Characters:

My favourite character was Polo. He was a very strange sort of traveler - and I've noticed this oddity with (now more than one) fiction by Italo Calvino. His characters always seem very socially detached and don't seem to be romanticised in any way. As if they are so human that even the author can't understand why they think they're so important. I loved Polo's relaying of the cities though - so very linguistically perfect!

Themes:

My favourite theme is conversation and communication. As you may already know - the book is a conversation between Kubla Khan and Marco Polo. It has intense amounts of conversation in it - but the relaying of the invisible cities is probably the most important part of the whole book - all down to the communication process of intentionally creating spaces to be positive or negative. It's all very beautiful. 

Storyline:

So, the best part of the storyline has to be every time Marco Polo and Kubla Khan deal with the human existence. As you can imagine, with all that traveling it gets very hypothetically existential and contains that essence of sublimity that the romantics used to heighten the individual - but seems to be used for the exact opposite here. I really, really like it. 

Verdict:

I give this book 7/9

2/3 for characters: It's 2/3 and not 100% because I felt there was not enough character exploration - it was all very surface layer. Something I'm not very much used to. 

100% for themes: Traveling, sensation, discovery and anti-romanticism - Italo Calvino does this reaction to reflection in the most convincing conversation ever written. 

2/3 for storyline: Just a bit short for me. It was like it just ended. Nothing. Not much satisfaction gained.