Agostino by Alberto Moravia (1944)

This is a short novel of growing up. There are many of those, but this is special, for one main reason: the author's capacity for seeing into, and representing, emotional states. We start with thirteen year old Agostino on the beach in Italy with his mother, to whom he is very attached. His father is dead. His mother is still young and attractive, and she garners the attention of a young man who wants to take her out on his raft. She uses Agostino as an insurance policy, requiring that he come along too. The reader feels the hot Italian sun baking down on them and somehow sees the historical epoch easily as well; the thirties' era of burgeoning fascism, emerging public sensuality and painted stylishness is present without being overtly delineated. Agostino's mind is changing, and he becomes fascinated by his mother's difference of behaviour with this young man, and senses the heat and excitement under her politeness. But he also resents the young man for his intrusion. Eventually, more and more disturbed by it, he invents excuses not to be around them and wanders off down the beach to a more populated area where boats are hired out. He falls in with a gang of young ruffians who help with the boats, and it becomes clear for the first time that he is a wealthy boy who is somewhat sheltered, someone the gang can rib mercilessly. Their knowledge of the sexual parts of life and their references to his mother and the young man in relation to them leave Agostino nonplussed. They act out the act for him in explanation! Agostino tries hard to fit in with this new group, feeling left out and low, and way behind the eight ball. Over several days his eyes are opened; he comes again to the beach - they're all away playing at a nearby estuary, so the older fellow who seems vaguely in charge offers to sail Agostino round the bay to join them. On the way there he makes Agostino lie in the bottom of the boat with him, holding him tight, asking him to recite poetry, which is presumably a kind of clumsy beginning to sexual advances. When the gang see the two of them arrive, they're awake immediately to the implications of spending time with Saro in his boat, and again Agostino learns something about the world he never knew before, in muted and uncertain tones, with their incessant ribbing which he only partly understands. On the last day one of the older boys points out a brothel. Agostino, feeling that he must prove himself to himself and to the gang, and also put a stop to his disturbed relationship with his mother (he has been looking at her with new eyes and not liking what he sees), decides that he must take the opportunity the brothel offers to sever himself from his old life altogether. Wangling money from his mother, he presents the eldest boy with it, saying that he can pay for them both. As the two of them enter the brothel the eldest boy is allowed in but Agostino is treated like a child and chased out. We leave him at that point, disgusted, upset, and still blindly wondering how he'll put up with what seems like years of frustration ahead. Moravia has an unerring ear for the stages of emotional attachment and psychological development and their circuitous courses, and makes this slim piece ring with truth.