Una Vita Violenta – Pier Paolo Pasolini

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). 

Ragazzi di Vita – Pier Paolo Pasolini

No need to repeat how much of a genius Pasolini was, in every possible field. The book is simultaneously heart-warming and heart-breaking in its simplicity, like many of the author’s movies.

I’m not quite sure whether the protagonist of the novel is Riccetto or Rome itself. The book is a great display of love for the city and for its borgatari, the people of the popular neighbourhoods of the Italian capital (this is similar in many ways to how I felt in many passages of Elsa Morante’s La Storia). Reading about the painful growing-up process of a boy is also rather strange in a book that is definitely not aimed at young adults.

Having watched countless Pasolini movies, I can just picture Riccetto played by Ninetto Davoli, one of Pasolini’s favourite actors, and the death of Marcello felt so similar to that of Ettore in the seminal Mamma Roma.