Reading Nada felt less like reading a novel and more like being dropped into someone else’s extremely tense family group chat, except it’s set in postwar Barcelona and everyone is emotionally unwell in a deeply artistic way. What got me wasn’t the plot (which I’ll spare you), but the feeling of the book: that constant […]
Posted in Blogs, Laforet | Tagged with nada, Uncategorized, war
“But he wasn’t a man”
My question: How do you relate to Agostino? How do you not?
-LS
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Fitting in, maturity, Puberty
When I first finished Nada, my immediate reaction was kind of anticlimactic. After a full year of Andrea’s life in Barcelona, she leaves feeling like she’s taken nothing away from the experience. She didn’t have a crazy transformation, didn’t really take away a clear lesson, and the story ended with no dramatic resolution. Just… nada. […]
Posted in Blogs, Laforet | Tagged with death, memory, Uncategorized, war
Song of the week: Mother – John Lennon Ew! That’s what I thought before I had even finished the first page and also what I was thinking while reading the 100 pages that followed. Surprisingly, this book was quite interesting despite all the weirdness. The fact that the main character, Agostino, is only thirteen years […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with adolescence, sexuality
This book really kept me on my toes. Every time I would go to read it I had no idea what was going to happen next but at the same time I did. This was such a weird read and I can’t possibly imagine how the author came up with this story. Maybe he was on drugs. I think Agostino…
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with coming of age, sexuality
Uncomfortable would be one way to describe how this book made me feel. Right off the bat, the taboo sexual undertones were impossible to ignore. Why do all roads lead to Freud??? The relationship between Agostino and his mother was especially confusing. One moment it felt like maternal concern, and the next I was questioning […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Agostino, Class division, Freud, Mommy Issues, RMST 202, teenagers are scary
Reading Agostino felt worse than Proust for me. Besides the fact that it is uncomfortable in a way that seems very intentional, it lost my attention at many parts of the book. The way it is written felt repetitive or bland, yet there are some interesting parts in this story. “She wasn’t naked, as he […]
I enjoyed reading Agostino, but it’s also a very uncomfortable experience for the reader. My impression that I got while reading: the novel is stopping before anything truly happens in a deliberately unsatisfying way while hinting towards repulsive content. Despite the novella having so many scenes alluding to sexual encounters, I don’t think the word […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with childhood, desire, love, relationships, sexuality
The opening scene of “Agostino” sets the tone of the text: toxic male jealousy. As a 13-year-0ld boy, Agostino loves the attention of his mother. Whether or not this was incestious, it demonstrates how important his mother is to him, and when she gives attention to other men, Agostino gets marvelously jealous. This “jealousy” fades […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with boyhood, broken family, jealousy, Mommy Issues, sexuality
While reading Agostino, I kept having this strong feeling that the novel is full of GAZES. It never explicitly talks about “looking” or “being seen,” yet almost every uncomfortable moment in the story seems to come back to it. Even the setting already hints at this. The story took place on a beach, which may […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Agostino, family, Gaze, relationships, Uncategorized
