Kevin Brophy AO is a poet, novelist, essayist, editor and book reviewer with a very impressive profile at Goodreads. Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne where he lectured in creative writing for twenty years, he is a Life Member at Writers Victoria and has been a judge for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards four times. In addition to his published collections, his poems and essays have been anthologised in multiple collections and literary journals, and he was awarded the Martha Richardson Medal for poetry in 2005. He was co-winner of the Calibre Prize for an outstanding essay in 2009, his book Creativity, was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers Nonfiction Literary Award in 1999, and his fiction has been short-listed for the Vogel Prize and the Christina Stead award.

The book blurb tells me that his writing has chronicled urban Melbourne, especially the street life of his heartland Brunswick. It is Brunswick which is captured in the cover image of his new collection of short stories, The Lion in Love, published by Finlay Lloyd, a boutique non-profit publisher from Braidwood NSW. which is dedicated to encouraging imaginative and challenging writing, to subtly innovative design and to celebrating the pleasures of print on paper in an electronic age,

Not all of the seventeen stories, however, are set in urban Melbourne. Demonstrating his range, Brophy's harrowing 'Apartment with Balcony' is about a couple of young men who've been friends since school days, making their first foray overseas. There is a social gulf between them because Herman comes from a wealthy family but the narrator is charmed by his easy grace.

Herman lit up another cigarette and squinted across at me. He was ugly, though everyone had always loved him. It had to do with the way he squinted and half-smiled at you, I thought. He was intelligent too, which in his case meant he was interested in everything. I don't know when he did his reading, but art and history and literature were second nature to him.

Herman could afford cigarettes, movies, trips down the Great Ocean Road in his father's car with stops for expensive fish meals at jetties and wharves along the way. (p.103)

The dynamics of this relationship are established early in the story, as the narrator looks back on the innocence of youth.

Herman talked about girls mostly, and that was fine with me at that time. Neither of us really knew any girls but talking about them was almost as good as knowing them. Herman would tell me which ones had the best legs, which ones would fall for me or for him if we did go up to them and actually talk to them. He was a dreamer, I guess. I admired that, because it meant he might one day dream about more serious things, more ambitious things, once we got the talking-about-girls thing out of the way. And he would be okay, we both knew that, because he was from a wealthy-enough family of well-educated parents, uncles, aunts and cousins. When he was ready for it, the right girl would hook up with him, we both knew that without having to say it. Whether I would find a girl eventually was a more difficult question. (pp.103-4)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/10/06/the-lion-in-love-by-kevin-brophy/ ( )