I found this book an uncomfortable read…
I immediately thought of the Oedipus complex, it’s so so very Freudian, but I tried not to think about it too much, because it made me ill, and instead appreciate it as best I could as literary work, which wasn’t easy.
This has been my least favourite reading so far. I found the writing style more plain than I like. My favourite part of every book is always the poetic descriptions, and there were many in Combray, the Shrouded Woman, and Nadja, but in Agostino, the descriptions didn’t resonate with me. Some moments like the green bubbles when his mother dove into the water were nice, but there wasn’t a lot of imagery that I connected to. I couldn’t picture things in my mind. One thing in particular that bothered me was that I could not picture the boat he and his mother take out to sea in my mind. I think that this book could have used like %5 more Proust descriptions. I think this vagueness has something to do with the move to realism and away from surrealism, which doesn’t make sense, I feel like if something is being described as true to reality you should be able to see it in your head. But the writing style seemed to lose a whole dimension of description that is the description of the essence and feeling of objects and places. This prevented me from being pulled into the story.
I also didn’t like a single character.
The mother was described by Agostino with so much anger and contempt that I started to think she was selfish and inappropriate around her son and wasn’t able to sympathize with her.
Then the gang of boys were all violent and cruel, which because of their age I can forgive them for, but doesn’t make me like them.
Saro was a pedophile.
And to top it off, Agostino himself didn’t even connect with me. We knew so little about his life that I couldn’t understand him as a character. I think probably this was intended to allow this story to just focus on the events of the summer, and the very specific shifts in Agostino’s character without clouding him, but I thought it made him boring.
The only character with whom I empathized with was Homs, but even in his case it was not that I felt bad for him because he was a well-built character at all, he is rarely touched on and is basically only described as black and weird looking, but more because they are describing racism and sexual violence which are very empathy worthy topics.
The ending was nice, I liked that it left things open-ended.
Do you have a question for us?
Meanwhile, I hear what you’re saying. (Though for what it’s worth, I think the book is written very well… it’s unadorned, but there are some great descriptions, perhaps more than you are allowing.) Yes, the characters are unlikeable. But I’m not sure that this is a book about character. Perhaps the characters are more archetypes than individuals?
I found humor in your hatred for this book haha. Although I don’t agree with everything you said but I do agree with some. Sara was a pedo and he was completely unbearable, some parts of the book was not as interesting to read. So I do understand why you feel the way you do towards this book.