Zeno's Conscience: A Novel
by Italo Svevo
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Book Summary Information
Author: Italo SvevoTranslator: William Weaver
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-02-04
ISBN: 0375727760
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Zeno's Conscience: A Novel
Book Review: Great Unsung Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
While in the process of reading this novel, the only thing I could compare it to was a turn-of-the-twentieth century, Italian Seinfeld, with Zeno himself clearly filling the role of a sort of proto-George Costanza. However, the great thing about this book, and why I really do think that it is, as the title of this review suggests, a "great unsung classic" is because the comedy in the novel is not a means unto itself, but rather to set the reader up for the deeper currents of thought running throughout. This is then capped off at the end, where the surprising shift in tone is able to catch the reader off guard. Indeed, the skill of the book is in its spinning a series of seemingly intoxicatingly benign and jovial sections (seemingly for these sections tend with subjects like death, ethics and class) and then its finishing with a sobering slap in the face. Indeed, without the ending, it seemed odd to me that James Joyce would champion what seemed to be such a pedestrian, if comic, novel, but with my completion of the book, the craft and mastery with which Svevo used to tell this tale has more than earned my respect.
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