My parents each
had a copy of this book when they moved in together back in the 1980s and,
thirty years later, realized they had no need for two copies in the same house so
gave one of them to me (that said, they’re not even sure whether they read the
novel or not!)
I did love Ragazzi di Vita, but I found Una Vita Violenta (which in many ways
follows in its footsteps) to be of a whole other calibre. Whereas one grows to
like the Riccetto in the former a bit less as the book goes on and he settles
within “the system”, I actually fell in love with Tommaso more and more with each
page (after feeling the intense desire to strangle him during his football
match with kids half his size at the beginning of the book, I just felt the
need to protect him from the evils of the world).
Sure, his
political path is a bit too allegoric for me, but by the end of the book my
nerves were completely shattered. I was glad he did not drown in the flood that
hit his old neighbourhood, but the end is really no less devastating (and yet,
it is the only way the book could/should have ended in order to be one of the
great works of the Italian literature of the last century).
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