i feel uncomfortable

As much as I tried to dive into this book, I couldn’t quite get into it. It was an easy enough read, nicely done in two sittings, with a pretty setting of beach and ocean, with a pretty writing style lulling me into feeling very serene and nice, but the character and his feelings were utterly unrelating to me. Had the story been following something else, I would have loved it.

This is a good bildungsroman in that all the emotions he feels are so, as is adolescently wont, extreme and vividly felt yet fleeting in their speed to get replaced by the next. Agostino is a funny sort of adaptable- I laughed to hear that, “all he felt was empty disappointment… the humiliation and repulsion of the daily outings had almost become his reason for living”. In fact, so many negative words were used, his disgust of the world was really quite vivid, often balancing a pull between repulsion and attraction. It was almost exhausting to read and imagine so many extremities, the nature passages were a nice break from all he was feeling (for once glad to not be a teenager anymore).

The whole rag-tag group of boys reminded me of The Lord of the Flies and a case I read by Chan Tack and Small on how children make friends in violent communities. Violence is learned and necessary, friends are made for protection, but not with the most loyalty, turning and changes of hearts are necessary at any moment. I hated Saro he was disgusting and the implications of sexual misconduct on boat rides and their treatment of the black boy who doesn’t even get a name, and how he was the only kind one to Agostino in the beginning but is treated with such racism.

The oedipus complexities of it all freaked me out. I am in psych, I understand the concept and all that Freud was going for, this is not to say I enjoy it and don’t allow myself some cognitive dissonance on the subject. The one entire page 43, which I won’t quote too much, but it starts with “she was not naked, as he had almost.. hoped while entering” and ended with, “inviting eyes and the mouth seemed to smile at him seductively”. I was disturbed.

Some books make me feel cold and I can’t get quite into them, maybe I’m not mature enough but casual cruelties (crushing bird skulls with fingers) and crude remarks throw me hard. And oh the concept of a child breaking a piggy bank to buy a prostitute. I think this was one of those books for me.

Question- do you think Agostino really matured in any significant or positive ways after meeting the boys and going through everything that happened in this book? Or did he just lose his innocence? And what does that imply about what it really means to grow up besides gaining new information and not knowing what to do with any of it?