16 May 2009

"The Daughters of the Moon" Short Story Reveiw

Read it now : "The Daughters of the Moon
By Italo Calvino
In The New Yorker
Genre: Fanstasy
Word Count: 4,000 approx.

Now this is a story that breaks the rules. It's wonderful what I learn in my quest for these stories. Italo Calvino is a famous Italian writer as much admired for his fables
as for his realist work.

"The Daughters of the Moon" is certainly fabulous, in the sense of being fantastical. It opens as if claiming to be science fictional, but soon takes its sf element, the idea of the moon having gained a porous consistency, like pumice stone, and runs away with it. Indeed, floats and flies away with it.

The story soon takes off on its own flight of fancy, with the aged moon coming down out of the sky like a balloon to play peekaboo among the skyscrapers of New York. Along the way, Calvino takes little shots at a culture based on shopping. There are so many wonderful images in this story that it's surprising that an animated film has not been made of it. No dialogue would be necessary, just a piece of lovely music to take us along on the journey.

Read it here.


Cheers
Morva Shepley
http://morvahouse.blogspot.com

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