Popsugar Reading Challenge Book 4: T Zero

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book published the year you were born
T Zero, by Italo Calvino

Calvino books are hard to describe. Each of his books is different, not only from other authors, but from other Calvino books. (For someone first checking him out, I recommend If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which at least has a linear - if wonderfully weird - plot.)

T Zero is a collection of short stories, tied together with scientific and mathematical themes. For instance, "Mitosis" contemplates the point of view of a creature that reproduces by dividing in two - which means, in some sense, that the original creature ceases to exist. "The Chase" applies mathematical probabilities to a life-and-death pursuit at very slow speeds in a traffic tie-up. "The Night Driver" has a desperate lover driving to his beloved's home to apologize after a phone call turned into an angry breakup. But what if she's also driving to his home at the same time? (This was in the ancient era of landlines, of course.)

A couple of the stories felt a bit over my head, but I kept reading, because sometimes the ending makes it all clear. Even if - as in "Meiosis" - it ends with the discovery that our narrator is a camel.

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