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It would be something of a misnomer to categorise this loose collection of short stories as novellas on love; the stories mainly concentrate on vaguely diffident young and middle-aged men who are seeking some form of gratification; whether it be romantic love, the gratification of finishing a book whilst being harangued by an attractive woman on a beach or of living la dolce vita in Rome.Calvino suffuses his style with a sense of lightness and poetry; his words caress the page and the images he...
Perhaps you are like me and always have a book. It is physical, the ledge we look over to the other, the real, world. And it is metaphysical, intertwining with our own existence, characters and plotlines merging from the page to the street, the office, the bedroom. Oh, it gets muddled. A tortured, drunken sleep, where one wonders if the conversation, the gaze, the regret was real; or did I dream it, did I read it.Amedeo Oliva always has a book. He took it to the beach. The book became every book...
There was a time when I thought my purpose in life was to encourage as many people as possible to read Calvino. I bought this book for someone once and they said that the problem with it was that it had all these men and all they had to do was look at women and the women would have sex with them. To which the only answer is that it is a work of fiction and it is written by a man.If this was all the book was about it would not be worth reading, but these short stories are a real delight. My favou...
Although not as brilliant or imaginative as other collections of the author, Difficult Loves certainly deserves a reading by those who enjoy Calvino's prose. Here Calvino is not interested in imaginary cities or parallel universes but speaks about contemporary daily life with its usual dose of humor and bitterness as well as some surrealistic bits. The quality of the stories knows highs and lows, but Calvino's ability to expand deep thoughts from a bathing suit lost at sea or from a one-night st...
Calvino’s prose is among the best I’ve read. Effortless, fluid beauty. He infuses the most normal situations with a God-like grace and reminds us that we are to other humans is how we are as humans; how our interactions with others is a reflection of our quirks, prejudices, inadequacies, and passions. The best thing about this collection of stories is how rewarding they are on repeated reads; initially dense prose gives way to light, colour and details of pretty awe-inspiring clarity. Although f...
I really enjoy reading Calvino. I bought this collection for the “Adventure of a Photographer”, alone and I think that story, by itself, is worth the price of admission. Here’s a link to it: https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/c...Overall, this is a quite nice read for Calvino fans. Early stories are more like sketches, but unmistakably the author’s. The last section, stories of love and loneliness, is more what you would expect.
Lots to enjoy in this more serious collection - less whimsy, more 'realism' (whatever that means when we talk about something that's just a bunch of black letters on, in this case, slightly yellowed pages). It's blokey, with 'The Adventure of a Reader' and 'The Adventure of a Wife as standouts - the first the most male gazey and the second an attempt to write from a woman's perspective that reveals a little of how a man might 'read' a woman's behaviour without fully having access. Or, I suppose,...
"The Enchanted Garden" is where it's at. Nothing really happens, but it's beautiful and significant anyway.Calvino, you are rich with the goods.From 'Adventures of a Reader':"For some time Amedeo had tended to reduce his participation in active life to the minimum. Not that he didn't like action: on the contrary, love of action nourished his whole character, all his tastes; and yet, from one year to the next, the yearning to be someone who did things declined, declined, until he wondered if he h...
And yet if I were permitted to replace my present state of uncertainty with that negative certainty, I would certainly refuse to make the exchange.* * *Once again I am amazed by Calvino's writing prowess. By far this is my favourite work of his. Comprised of 13 stories exploring love as a sublime and indescribable force, Difficult Loves takes the reader on a journey through the human experience of love and delves into its sensitive intricacies.From its title, love is obviously the central theme
This is going to be the most pretentious thing I've written for this site to date, but here it is. This book at it's best resembles that masterpiece of short story collections, James Joyce's Dubliners.But no quite. Difficult Loves is a truly remarkbale book of short stories. They take place mostly in Italy and Europe and almost all deal with the difficulties or loving something, or someone and communication. Really it's about the difficulties of communication.I'm a bit of an Italo Calvino fanboy...
Difficult Loves is eleven very short stories in which Calvino is like a biologist at a microscope: analysing the sensation of a few minutes or hours in minute detail, revealing the patterns, beauty, and secrets of the mundane. They reminded me a little of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, published 30 years later (see my review HERE). Realistic moments, rather than fantastical, and despite the titles, most are not really love stories, nor adventures. Image: Woman looking in microscope (Source.)C...
Really disappointed with this one. Two stars because I enjoy Calvino's prose, but overall I couldn't get past the gross descriptions of women in these stories. I own Cosmicomics, so hopefully that one is better... On a more superficial note, it's awfully too bad because I was considering buying more of Calvino's works since Mariner rereleased them with such gorgeous covers, but I think I'm gonna skip doing that now!
