Two Adolescents: The Stories of Agostino & Luca

Two novels by Alberto Moravia display his gifts as a teller of stories sharp with characterization and deep understanding.Agostino is the story of a sensitive, cloistered boy who, beyond all sense of proportion, loves and idolizes his youthful widowed mother. The shock of finding he is not the center of his mother’s universe is more than Agostino can stand. In an instinctive fumbling effort to gain self-respect and values, Agostino joins a gang of older boys who derisively and callously supply him with a quick and drastic sexual education. Agostino finds he has won knowledge without wisdom; and in the words of Moravia. “He has lost his first estate without having succeeded in winning another.”

Luca is more sophisticated, knowing and introspective. When his active mind questions the conventions and routine of everyday life he comes gradually to the conclusion that life is a monstrous conspiracy — a plot to make one conform at the expense of one’s soul. His answer is a complete negation of the pattern of living — an austere and adolescent reaction that leads him, unwittingly to the brink of death itself, and from which only the purge of violent illness and an unexpected romance save him, mentally and physically, and show him the way to maturity.