Pretty much every moment of Agostino made me very uneasy. The (possibly) Freudian undertones of Agostino’s feelings towards his mother were definitely somewhat disquieting to me; and the mother’s lack of focus on her son’s wellbeing may have been even more so. However, I think the part that stood out to me most was the cruelty and toxicity of Agostino’s new “friends”: these boys basically spend their days running wild and hurting one another in various ways, and Agostino – “Pisa” – almost immediately becomes a particular target for the group. Another disturbing factor in their dynamic is the role of Saro, the lifeguard. Saro “supervises” the boys, but he seems to facilitate their prejudice and cruel behaviour far more than he keeps them safe – and, as we learn later on, his interest in the group is at least partly predatory.

In some ways, Agostino reminded me a lot of Proust’s work: like the narrator of Swann’s Way when he is a child, Agostino is shown to experience a complicated attachment to his mother, a pointed sense of loneliness or isolation, and the brimming of desires or impulses that don’t entirely make sense. I would say that both stories are about growing up and the uncertainty that comes with it, especially when parental or emotional support is limited or absent. Interestingly, while the narrator of Proust’s novel seems to try to hold onto his childhood – or at least doesn’t make much of an effort to show his maturity – Agostino is struck by the need to become more like a man. I think that the reason behind this is mainly situational: Proust’s narrator, although not exactly encouraged in his “childishness,” is not pushed very frequently to behave in any other way, while Agostino is strongly influenced by both his growing discomfort around his mother and the attitudes of the local boys.

Freudian undertones aside, the relationship between Agostino and his mother is an aspect of Moravia’s novel that I am still curious about. Does Agostino’s love for his mother go beyond his initial view of her as dignified and beautiful? Should the mother be defined by her fondness for Agostino, or by the fact that she slaps him and frequently leaves him for the young man from the beach? Maybe the unclear nature of the relationship between mother and son is a significant example of the power of the unspoken – how something of the “real” can be revealed even as it is left unnamed.