The concept of this book, as blurbed, made it sound like a mesmerising & wonderful concoction, especially to a keen Calvino reader. It is. However, practicality & execution of this particular piece was lack lustre.

For me, the gem of this little collection of stories inspired by the tarot was the pathos inducing author's afterword.

Do not pick it as your introduction to this marvellous author, but look instead to the tenets of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Invisible Cities & Mr Palomar. ( )

Crossing "Castles": Italo Calvino was a master of surreal storytelling -- he was, for example, one of only two authors I've seen who could manage a second-person narrative. But his gimmick falls flat in "The Castle of Crossed Destinies," a book that is intriguingly laid out, but never manages to be more than a curiosity.

In the first section, a traveler comes to a castle full of other guests, but for some reason no one there is able to speak. To tell each other about their histories, they use a pack of tarot cards to communicate their stories -- tales about love affairs, ancient cities, and Faustian pacts.

The second is pretty much the same, except that it takes place in a tavern, where mute people are still using tarot cards to describe their pasts. The stories -- evil queens, fallen warriors, even an Arthurian tale -- get darker and stranger, especially when the narrator himself began to describe his own past to the people who are watching him and the cards.

As an idea, tarot cards being used to tell a story is brilliant. Especially since the stories that Calvino spins out are not necessarily the only interpretation -- each card used to tell the story can be interpreted differently. The problem is, in the first half of the book, Calvino tries to apply this to some very boring, straightforward little stories. They tend to stop suddenly, without much of a finale.

The second half of the book uses this gimmick more skilfully, with Calvino writing in greater detail, and using more ornate, atmospheric writing. It feels less like stories wrapped around some cards, and more like stories with cards as illustrations of what might have been. He also adds a more eerie, macabre tale to this half, making it even more engaging.

The first half sags in a big way; it's almost tiring to read. But the second half of "Castle of Crossed Destinies" is where Calvino's tarot gimmick starts to pay off. Interesting, but not all that it could have been.

I suspect that this was a lot more fun and frustrating and fulfilling (and any other F words that you can think of....) to write than it is to read. The beauty of his game of constructing tales from tarot cards is all in the creation. I didn't share in it in the telling other than the usual admiration I have for his quirky unique approach to story-telling.

In short, a man arrives at a castle in a forest. At dinner are a bunch of other travellers who are eating in silence. He quickly realises that they and he have suddenly become mute. A pack of tarot cards is laid out on the table and different members of the party use them to illustrate their stories which our narrator attempts to interpret into a narrative.

The second half of the book takes place in a tavern with similar circumstances but a less grand set of cards. This time the combination of cards illusrate well known stories, like that of Hamlet, Faust and Oedipus.

Clever but like watching someone else with a rubik's cube ( )

Having read a few of Calvino's books, I can confidently say that this is not one of his best. The book relies a lot on its gimmick, for want of a better word, and while many of his other original ideas have worked brilliantly in other books, I think he labours this one past its worth. It's not a bad book, but I cannot find any particular virtue to recommend it for. ( )

This was a book I desperately wanted to like, but unfortunately I couldn't quite bring myself to do so.

It's certainly a very clever novel, telling stories through Tarot cards, but ultimately that method of narrative is quite restricting. It's all done very well, but as said, it all gets a little tedious and the style is a bit too constraining. ( )