February 13, 2014
Alfonso is a story of a
spiritual struggle within an immigrant’s soul. As an outsider,
Alfonso labors to fit in and embrace his new life in a new world –
Australia – only to find himself succumbing to dark undertows of
insult, isolation, and estrangement. Though he strives to cope with
these dangerous forces, the only language he knows with which to
confront them is a pictorial one, the duende-infused images of
his boyhood Galacian village: shadowy forests and dark pines, village
girls with eyes the colour of chestnuts, mysterious croaking of black
frogs, poison kisses of witches, crows whose mere presence means
death. Though Alfonso’s newfound mastery of English lends him an
instrument of accommodation and a facile veneer of acceptability, the
deep grammar of his imaginal tongue threatens to undermine all the
new values to which he aspires.
James N. Powell