[In the following evaluation of Agostino, Funderburg lauds the effectiveness of Moravia's use of short sentences and minimal dialogue in his psychological study of an adolescent boy.]

Agostino is a psychological study of a boy who for the first thirteen years of his life is unaware of woman as such and of his transition from naiveté to awareness of sensual life. Agostino is initiated abruptly and crudely into the knowledge of sexual life by a group of boys from the dregs of society.

The transition through which Agostino passes is well planned and his poignant feelings are realistic. At first, he worships his mother, is honest and incapable of lying, and completely unaware of anything sensual. Hence, when he meets with the vulgarity of the boys, he is horrified and feels repulsion toward them. With Moravia's introduction of his mother's lover, Renzo, Agostino feels uneasy without knowing why. This is the beginning of his awareness which needs explanation and which needs a stimulus to make him think. After the explanation of physical relations from the group of boys and after his first sensation of surprise passes, he considers such behaviour on the part of his mother, not as right or wrong, but as being natural. Typical and realistic is Agostino's search for any overt signs of his mother's supposed relationship and his consequent sense of delusion when he sees none.

When spying on his mother in hopes of seeing her nude and finding her in a negligee, he feels a mixture of repulsion and attraction. Because he feels deceived in having believed her different from what he now supposes she actually is, he begins to hate his love for her and to see her only as a woman.

The quality and importance of his recently acquired knowledge oppress and sadden him. He feels a need for clarifying to himself the relationship between his mother and Renzo. While his first feelings of uneasiness and repulsion were those of a filial love disturbed by an obscure awareness of maternal femininity, after his first meeting with the group of boys, they arose from a sharp, unbearable curiosity. If, before, he tried to separate his affection for his mother from his repulsion toward her, he now feels it necessary to separate his new knowledge from the sense of being a son of a woman whom he wishes to consider merely as a woman. He now feels that her maternal immodesty provokes him. Yet, inspite of his constant efforts to be objective, he is always dimly aware that she will always be the mother he loved so innocently. Suddenly, Agostino is made to realize that he is still a child. However, his most important realization is that the maternalness and femininity in his mother cannot be separated by him, since they have always co-existed and will continue.

The style is easy and the lack of long, complicated sentences seems to suit the story of a child. Moravia has written the novel with a minimum of dialogue, which makes for greater description rather than explanation on the part of Agostino. This lack of dialogue emphasizes the psychological aspect of the novel, for conversation by Agostino during his various crises would be unnatural What dialogue there is is in the form of phrases or short sentences, for the most part from Agostino's associates. It indicates their lack of education and their social class. The short sentences also form a contrast to the fairly long sentences of the description and therefore, give greater emphasis to Agostino's transition.