Marcovaldo - Italo Calvino

Cold has a thousand shapes and a thousand ways of moving in the world: on the sea it gallops like a troop of horses, on the countryside it falls like a swarm of locusts, in the cities like a knife-blade it slashes the streets and penetrates the chinks of unheated houses. In Marcovaldo's house that evening they had burned the last kindling, and the family, all bundled in overcoats, was watching the embers fade in the stove, and the little clouds rise from their own mouths at every breath. They had stopped talking; the little clouds spoke for them: the wife emitted great long ones like sighs, the children puffed them out like assorted soap-bubbles, and Marcovaldo blew them upwards in jerks, like flashes of genius that promptly vanish.

This is a very amusing collection of very short stories that create a short novel. The stories all involve a rural man moved into an industrial area of Italy after the second world war. He is a dreamer and finds simple pleasures in the city, mostly through fanciful dreams and poorly prepared actions. Calvino makes the tales engaging and fun as the sketches quickly become more fantasy than reality. The simple man is bewildered by his city life and longs for the simple pleasures found in nature. I can't imagine anyone not taking pleasure in reading these delightful stories. Calvino has done a great job of bringing together a cohesive group of stories that combine to tell a larger tale. The writing is wonderful as it is moves quickly and brings the reader to instant involvement in Marcovaldo's quirky life.