Hi Romance Studiers,

It has been a day since I finished reading Roberto Arlt’s novel “Mad Toy” and my overall experience with it was quite pleasurable. I found Silvio’s personal turmoil in most chapters to be quite relatable and the narrative as a whole engaged me throughout the entire reading. While I have been very privileged to grow up in a space feeling continuously supported by my parents and never forced to face the pressure of financial insecurity, I was drawn into Silvio’s internal conflict with the morally gray actions he took. From the mental gymnastics he did with Enrique and Lucio to justify thievery to the delusional teenage boy belief that a relationship with an aristocratic woman would solve his problems, these were all things that I personally remember feeling and going through in high school.

During high school, I had a shoplifting phase with my friends and reading chapter one “The Band of Thieves”, Arlt’s depiction of teenagers planning their ‘heist’ like they were masters at work was almost too accurate. Especially when Silvio recounted on the old days, stating “I don’t remember what subtleties and twisted reasoning we used to convince ourselves that robbery was a noble and beautiful act” (Arlt 29). This is exactly how I think now when I reflect on my justification of shoplifting, believing I was simply anti-capitalist and these billion dollar companies have already accounted for this through shrinkage evaluations. Even the end of the first chapter when the group of friends chose to leave the life of thieving behind due to the danger they felt from their last event, all except Enrique, was so relatable. It paralleled my group of friend after we got caught three years ago, three of us chose to quit except for one who refused to stop out of spite of the worker who caught her. A reoccurring thought that Silvio has throughout the novel was this idea of dating a beautiful, aristocratic woman who would save him from poverty, solving all his internal and tangible issues. Especially in the monologue Silvio made after being tipped with a kiss in chapter two, as he stated “and though my desire for a woman grows slowly, I play and replay the scenes and foresee the happiness a love of that sort would bring me, complete with riches and glory”, I found myself thinking this is exactly how I felt in grade nine after going on a date with my crush (Arlt, 79). It is such a teenage boy way of thinking, and it touches on deeper themes of compensated masculinity. The novel explored many different themes throughout the chapters from masculinity, escaping poverty under capitalism, and even suicidal ideation. The ways they were approached through a younger lens made it feel more relatable, especially as my current age was not too far removed from the protagonist.

What I personally could not wrap my head around after reading this novel was the ending. While I agree with its message to stay curious and find the joys of life, even when what is in front of you does not shine bright, I felt as though it was slammed in last minute to end on a high note. Throughout the novel, this messages and meanings I derived from it were not leading me to expect this kind of send off ending. My question for the other Romance Studiers is, did you think the ending message stayed thematic with the rest of the book?

Let me know what you think in the comments and I look forwarded to talking to you all about the book this Wednesday!