★ 05/12/2014
Moravia’s novel is neither among the great Italian modernist’s most famous works (The Conformist and Contempt became classic films, by Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard, respectively), nor, at 100 pages, his longest. But this dreamy, haunting study of a young boy’s painful initiation into sexual consciousness is so psychologically rich and vividly imagined—in Moore’s plangent translation—that it resembles a painting as much as a novella. Young Agostino is on holiday on the coast with the mother he worships. But when she takes a lover, a dejected Agostino seeks acceptance in a group of wild children whose life consists of cruel games and petty crimes. The only adult in their midst is the 12-fingered boatman (and presumptive pederast) Sandro, whose advances toward Agostino call into question the innocence of the young boy’s desires for his mother’s attention. Determined to free himself from the new obsessions that trouble his summer days, Agostino sets his sights on an ill-conceived salvation—that is, the approximation of manhood offered by a local brothel—to reconcile the warring passions that have interrupted his idyll. Like the best of NYRB Classics’ European repertoire, this book both rewards admirers of its illustrious author while providing an entry point for curious readers. Either way, the twinned landscapes of frustrated Oedipal longing and the Fascist-era coastline evoke a tainted beauty both sensuous and violent. (July)

...psychologically brilliant...Only Moravia could have written such a nasty and perfect ‘beach read.’” —Harper’s Magazine

"...this dreamy, haunting study of a young boy’s painful initiation into sexual consciousness is so psychologically rich and vividly imagined—in Moore’s plangent translation—that it resembles a painting as much as a novella...Like the best of NYRB Classics’ European repertoire, this book both rewards admirers of its illustrious author while providing an entry point for curious readers. Either way, the twinned landscapes of frustrated Oedipal longing and the Fascist-era coastline evoke a tainted beauty both sensuous and violent." —Publishers Weekly starred review

"Originally published in 1945, this novel about the loss of innocence shines in a new translation….Perceptive and razor-sharp insights into the agony of adolescence."—Kirkus starred review

“The carnality that animates Agostino is naked and unashamed. But the reader who stays to its end will see that it is love with dross burned clean away.” —William DuBois, The New York Times

“Agostino is the case-study of an Oedipal conflict which manifests itself rather late by classical Freudian standards, but offers Moravia, in line with the whole tradition of the novel of adolescence in Europe, a richer, more complex subject matter to make use of than would otherwise be the case.” —The Southern Review
 
“A brilliant novella.... In the sober narrative of Agostino Moravia again dissected a mother–son relationship as the young protagonist of the novella made the joint discovery of sexuality (while his young, beautiful, sensuous mother became involved with a lover) and of class distinction, as the neglected boy took up with a band of working-class youth, whose sexual knowledge was far more advanced than his own. Their contempt for his innocence and their envy of his family’s wealth run through the story in a typically Moravian juxtaposition.” —William Weaver, The New York Review of Books
 
“An expert study of an adolescent boy and the anguished processes by which he accepts the fact that his mother is, primarily, a woman.” —Vogue

"Moravia writes with spare attention; the reader becomes enraptured in this sensual world just as Agostino himself begins to take notice of it.” —Nathaniel Popkin, Cleaver Magazine

"Michael F. Moore has given us a wonderful new translation of a classic coming-of-age story set in the modern world. His translation is seamless and loyal to the original yet updated enough to appeal to contemporary readers." —Andrew Martino, World Literature Today

★ 2014-05-07
Originally published in 1945, this novel about the loss of innocence shines in a new translation.Thirteen-year-old Agostino finds himself in a precarious position, poised between childhood and adolescence. He's a loving son to his gorgeous, widowed mother and at first is content to spend time with her on a Mediterranean beach. Eventually, however, the mother begins a flirtatious relationship with Renzo, a young man who works on the local boats. Agostino feels his mother's attraction to Renzo and is powerless to do anything about it. Inhabiting the same space are some local neighborhood boys, used to a more rough-and-tumble—and frankly vulgar—existence. Their ribald repartee at first embarrasses and later intrigues the highly innocent Agostino, who never quite fits in with this subculture. Moravia is psychologically astute in portraying the agony of Agostino, who for the first time begins to notice his mother as a woman and, at times, a very seductive one. To escape from the tormented ambivalence he feels, he starts to hang out with the local boys, who tease and mock him. Out of Agostino's struggle comes the realization that "he had bartered away his former innocence, not for the virile, serene condition he had aspired to but rather for a confused hybrid state in which, without any form of recompense, the old repulsions were compounded by the new." At the end of the novella, nothing is resolved for the moment since Agostino, after all, remains a 13-year-old—and would anyone seriously want to return to that age?Perceptive and razor-sharp insights into the agony of adolescence.