This is a wonderful novel with some striking characters.  I liked this little kid crying and eating bread at the same time, and the kindness of the giant man who takes his hand, and the hand feeling like bread to the small boy.  If we held their hands more, there’d be fewer kids crying in the world.

‘They set off and walk through an olive-grove.  Pin chews the bread; a tear or two is still falling over his cheek and he swallows it with the bread.  The big man has taken him by the hand; it’s a huge hand, warm and soft, and seems made of bread too.’

Source: Italo Calvino, The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (London: Vintage, 1998), trans. Archibald Colquhoun, revised Martin McLaughlin, p. 85

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