January 10, 2022
Young Love &and Other Stories
Jill Lindquist
One of my favourite Australian writers, Félix Calvino, has
produced another stunning collection of stories, Young Love & other
Stories (Arcadia) which takes the reader into the heart of his homeland in
Galicia, Spain, revealing the essence of his rural upbringing and sharing
stories of life and love in all its various forms. As in Calvino’s other
collections, the stories are atmospheric and deceptively
simple. I’ll provide my impressions of just two:
The first story ‘Sunday Lunch’ describes a barren, remote
Galician village, once a bustling community but now silent and decaying and
with only two men and a woman the surviving residents. The three
elderly friends meet for lunch each Sunday. It is their way of checking in on
each other and a time to share stories of the past. When they find the woman,
Avelina, dead, the two men must deal with the process of giving her a
respectful send off. They are in shock and ill-prepared. Their heartbreak,
difficulty and frustration at dealing with the body of their friend is
palpable. There is also the unspoken question that with only the two
of them remaining, which would die first and leave the other alone to face the
impossible burden of doing all that the two together could barely manage for
Avelina?
The title story ‘Young Love’ is a sensitive
portrayal of a boy, Manuel, transitioning with all the painful shyness,
confusion and insecurity that comes with crossing the great divide from boy to
man. Manuel’s stumbling attempts to negotiate the minefield of
misunderstandings in the world of courtship are told against the backdrop of
the changing seasons, work in the fields, the bonds of male friendship and
social opportunities to observe and engage with the ever-mysterious
female.
Calvino’s writing is so very evocative; his voice authentic.
There is a humanity and sweetness to the stories that avoids sentimentality. He
stretches out a hand and takes his reader into a very different world but one
which explores universal themes.