Hi everyone, welcome to another Romance Studies Post, this week I read “Agostino” by Alberto Moravia, and I have a lot of thoughts on it.
At the begging of the term during introduction week I answered to someones question in their post, in this question they asked which book where we the most excited to read and why, I unbeknownst to what expected me upon reading it said “Agostino” by Alberto Moravia, as far as the why, well it wasn’t very deep, when researching the books I would pick I thought this one would be interesting, so in what I believe where my words it looked like a simple coming of age story about a little Italian boy in the 40’s, innocent enough right? well imagine my surprise when I read the book.
If I were to sum up this book I would say it is in fact a coming of age story but it is also something much more complex than that, Agostino is a wealthy 13 year old boy who is very close to his mother, however that closeness is a rather nice way of putting things, Agostino basically has an oedipus complex and when his mom started spending time with her boyfriend he took that as an act of “neglect” and decided to seek company elsewhere, he found that company with a gang of boys who lived very different and much less privileged lives than he did, which in order to fit in to that life he had to immerse himself in it and attempted to live life like these kids did, however it was all just pretend since he didn’t actually have to face the hardships that the other kids did. Over all the book had a lot of complex topics and I have mixed feelings as to whether I liked it or not.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do not think this is a bad book by any means, if anything I think the fact that Moravia was able to discuss such complicated topics and communicate them in what I consider to be a relatively short book is impressive, I can also applaud that it managed to make me physically uncomfortable and some parts where hard to get through which I think speaks of the level of skill the author has when writing a book like this, that also makes me interested in his other work and makes me wonder if the topics change or remain similar as well as what feelings does he evoke in his other books.
That brings me to the question I would like to ask this week, would you read another book by Moravia? Why or why not?
Thanks for sharing! I did some research on Moravia and he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize 15 times, so he is definitely a really popular writer during his time. Although I didn’t really enjoy this book that much, I do really like his writing style and I agree with you, it does take a level of skill to make readers feel physically uncomfortable. However I felt that this book was not a great introduction to Moravia. I would be open to reading more of his work, but based on this book alone, I would not read another book by him.
‘when his mom started spending time with her boyfriend he took that as an act of “neglect”’
You put “neglect” in quotation marks, but she does in fact neglect him… not criminally so, but she (understandably, perhaps) is distracted and no longer focuses the same amount of attention on him. So it’s not as though Agostino is making things up… he’s seeing (and feeling) what’s going on, and has to figure out how to negotiate this new landscape.