Review of Volume 1.
The surmise is quite simple, 10 people in plague riven Florence decide to decamp to the country and isolate themselves from the contagion. To while away the time, on each day they each tell a story. This volume held 4 days and so 40 stories, plus explanation of how they set out, the servants they bought with them, where they were and how they arranged themselves.
The days each take a theme, so you are told 10 rather similar stories in a set.
It is difficult not to compare this to Chaucer's Canterbury tales. It has a similar set up, a group of people each tell a tale. I would say that, so far, Chaucer has the edge. Here all the stories are told of someone else, they are no first person tales. The story tellers are largely anonymous, they don't interact with each other or the stories to any great extent. They are also like of estate and degree, there are no voices of the common people here. Compare that to Chaucer and the liveliness of the Wife of Bath is absent.
I read a significant portion of this on a trip to Germany, And it works quite well as a travel book, most stories being between 2 & 10 pages, making it easy enough to stop & pick up again. ( )

I reviewed this translation together with the two others I own here