Two Adolescents

Subtitle: The Stories of Agostino and Luca. Includes Agostino (original Italian 1944), translated by Beryl de Zoete, and Luca (original Italian "La Disubbidienza" 1948), translated by Angus Davidson.Since the publcation of 'The Woman of Rome', most American critics agree that Alberto Moravia is a novelist of importance; one of the leaders of the literary renaissance that Italy has been enjoying since the war. Moravia again displays 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 - that she is favorable to the attentions of a man of her own generation - 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." Agostino is the true adolescent, familiar to everyone who recalls that confused tragi-comic period of their youth.Luca is worlds apart in outlook from Agostino, more sophisticated, knowing and introspective - moody and on the threshold of maturity. Luca, perhaps, knows too much and thinks too much, and 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.[from the flaps]