"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade" (3).

What is absolutely fabulous about this book is the fact that the reader is the star of it. The reader gets a love interest, the Other Reader, and all sorts of obstacles thrown in his way. For example, the way in which the first story terminates after a chapter but it doesn't really end.

The chapters themselves form a pattern of sorts in which lone chapters are cut off at their peak. Combined with the lone chapters are the ones in which the reader's story is played out. That is, the male reader.

I, like Corey, felt distanced from the character of the reader being that I am a girl. But then I began to wonder if my being a girl really mattered that much in relation to this book. After all, The Reader and I are on the same journey together. That is to find a complete and coherent narrative.

-Doris the Finkasaurus