Alfonso - Goodreads I Ashley

March 17, 2014


Melissa Ashley
I have just finished this beautiful book. There is so much wisdom packed into those 117 pages. The closing image of the snake shedding its skin and Alfonso in the house he renovated brought tears to my eyes. Calvino uses clothing and the home as great images for Alfonso transforming into a man. I loved how the author merged the imagery on the final page. Were they ghosts, memories, of Alfonso as a boy with his mother, or was it the light, when you just open your eyes? It all works and flows together. Calvino’s writing is exquisite, the sadness, the complexity of the emotion that he has invested in Alfonso, told through his daily rituals, his habits and behaviour, feels very real. I can relate to his struggles to go out into the world, and then the rewards, or the love, the living, he receives when he does muster up the courage to do so.

I really liked Nancy. She is portrayed in a way that grows more and more complex, with different layers of her personality unfolding. I think her patience with Alfonso the most important aspect of her, in a way. That is what he needs, at that moment. He is unable to help himself, he is paralysed, and in fact, acts in ways to push her away. He is so exquisitely conflicted and tortured by his inexperience, expectations, and needs. Nancy does not seem to know Alfonso well, but it seems that she accepts him and, not necessarily understands him, maybe she does, I cannot tell, but she is patient with him. She allows him to be himself. I am pleased the author allowed the reader hope in the end. I find Calvino’s writing very comforting, and that is the writing that I love most of all. Writing that is true, that tells me something about living, about being alive, wrapping sadness and joy up together. That is why I read literature, to discover something that is true in a story, and to be comforted.

Alfonso - Goodreads I Katherine

March 6, 2014

Katherine
Mar 04, 2014Katherine rated it 5 of 5 stars
A beautiful, gentle book - filled with longing and exquisitely phrased.
The pace is slow and the story subtle, both good things in this case.
Calvino captures the loneliness and dislocation of the migrant's experience perfectly.

A Hatful of Cherries - Review I Bazzett

March 5, 2014

I've only even been aware of Felix Calvino for a month or two, and his 2007 story collection, A HATFUL OF CHERRIES, is the second of his books I've read. (Last week I read his 2013 novella, ALFONSO.) Both books are just so damn good that Calvino is now on my short list of favorite authors.

There are sixteen stories here, most of them very short, characterized by a delicacy and economy of phrasing not often found in writers today. A bit of Hemingway, a touch of Chekhov, and the rest is ... well, Calvino, I suspect, and, taken all together, the effect is simply perfect. His settings range from post-Civil War Spain in the 1930s to modern-day Australia and its Spanish migrant population there. The subjects too are simple and finely wrought. A small boy wishing for a knife of his own ("The pocket knife"). A groom en route to his wedding who goes mysteriously missing ("Detour"). A young couple hopes in vain for a better life, a dream dashed by senseless violence ("Basilio") A courtship by mail based on lies and half-truths which ends badly ("The bride") - or does it? Unattached men searching tentatively for love and new beginnings ("A new place"). A slyly dry sense of humor pervades "The laundry incident" and "Restless hands."

Every one of these stories is honed and polished to perfection, but if I had to pick a favorite - a hard choice - it would probably be the title story, which uses the innocence and budding sexual curiosity of two village boys to tell the story of a hired girl who gets "in trouble," but lets the reader ponder "whodunit." Or maybe the last story, "Unfinished thoughts," about two old women, "once darlings of their village, now wrinkled skin bags holding together bundles of bones and two old brains bent on pain and nostalgic reflection." Lucia has loved Elvira "always," and now Elvira is dying.

What I find most astounding about his work is not that it's so good and so mature; but that English is his THIRD language (after his native Galician and Spanish). Felix Calvino may have come late to this writing thing, but he has obviously been working hard at it, and in the writing of just two slim volumes, it appears he has already mastered it. These are great stories. I will be impatiently awaiting his next book. Bravo, Mr. Calvino!
   TimBazzett | Mar 2, 2014 |