Easily my favourite book from Calvino’s Ancestors trilogy, and not just because a group of artists from my
hometown decided to give Cosimo the burial he deserved, and placed a tombstone
on a tree in the woods (they did the same for many other fictional characters
whose burial places are not known – Anna Karenina, Obi Wan Kenobi, Roy Batty…).
The story is clearly implausible, but not completely absurd: after all every
kid at some point wanted to just leave his/her family and go live on a tree
(except that every kid would then decide to come back down within 15 minutes
and not end up spending the rest of his/her life up there). The book is sweeter
than the other ones of the trilogy, probably because Cosimo is actually a
character to whom the reader can relate, unlike Medardo and Agilulfo.
Being confined by his desire to only live on trees without ever again
touching the ground, Cosimo actually manages to win the hearts of Napoleon and
the Tsar, of Rousseau and the people of his village, and, ultimately, also of
the readers.
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