Difficult Loves [Paperback]

One of the warmest and gentlest collections of stories by Calvino, and one of the most grounded in the real world. Lovely and elegant prose that lolls in your imagination like a story whispered into your ear on late spring day. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

One of the warmest and gentlest collections of stories by Calvino, and one of the most grounded in the real world. Lovely and elegant prose that lolls in your imagination like a story whispered into your ear on late spring day.

(Amazon.com Review )

Brief, limpid, graceful, and surprisingly fresh.
(Newsweek - Peter Prescott )

The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work, the occasional incandescence of vision, and a certain lovable nuttiness make this collection well worth reading. -- Margaret Atwood (The New York Times Book Review ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don’t say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be?. ? Italo Calvino

The nine “adventures” and two longer tales?“Smog” and “A Plunge into Real Estate”?of Difficult Loves achieve that almost miraculous balance between the obvious and the indescribable, the real and the imaginary, the familiar and the fabulous. Calvino transforms the lives of ordinary people into brilliant explorations of intricate interior worlds. Through a mystery encounter between a soldier and a widow, the obsession of a photographer, the anticipation of a long-distance romance, and more, Calvino tells the tales with elegance and precision, weaving into his writing instances of recognition in which he cherishes the deceptions and illusions of love swept away.

Italo Calvino (1923?85) is considered one of the most popular Italian novelists of the twentieth century, and is remembered for his widely imaginative and often darkly comic fantasies. His highly acclaimed works include If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Marcovaldo, The Baron in the Trees and Mr. Palomar.