“John Calabro explores his youth lived in France. Bellecour is a street in Paris where Italians, Pieds-Noirs, and the French cohabit and exchange kind words, unkind words, kisses and caresses. Bellecour presents a microcosm of an archetypical environment. The context is European, and John Calabro approaches the narrative in an unique way. This is not nonfiction, though we would like to believe otherwise; this a not a short story, not a novella, not a short novel. When, in 2005, I first published this pristine work, I suggested we call it a récit, a particular genre not much practiced on this side of the Atlantic. John Calabro found the proper form to encompass his stratified narrative. At times poetic, other times realistic, Bellecour stands out for its refined originality. John Calabro offers a snapshot of contemporary individualism and traditional community life. This new edition of the seminal text will attract a new exigent readership.”
Antonio D’Alfonso, author, editor and publisher
“Bellecour successfully weaves together the themes of immigration and child sexuality. The erotic
episodes are real, but they’re also metaphoric of how a dominant culture seduces its ethnic
innocents, absorbs and subjugates them.”
Luciano Iacobelli, writer, artist and publisher 2005
“A pubescent boy’s ecstasies and agonies during a 1963 Paris heat wave. This is a small masterwork of erotic candour and psychological acuity.”
Jim Bartley
The Globe and Mail’s top five fiction of 2005
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