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whatever_andra's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
vaticerratic's review against another edition
Funny psycho-narrative study of a character who's got himself all wrong. Narrator Dino has been born into wealth, but keeps insisting that he can't afford things simply to avoid the strings attached when he asks his mother for money (meanwhile, she insists, quite rightly, that you don't really stop being a wealthy heir so easily, merely by announcing that you're not).
The story includes many meditations on boredom, but Dino uses the word idiosyncratically, to describe his condition of disconnection from or non-relation to the world. But is he really so uninvested? He gets caught in a cycle, that continues to the end of the book, of insisting that he has the upper hand in his relationship with his young lover Cecilia, only to once again debase himself in his maniacal desire to possess and control her. His alienation isn't so much from the world or the people in it as from himself, whom he barely seems to know.
By the 80% mark of the book, Dino's made so many claims about himself that don't add up that I hardly trust anything he says. At the same time, I felt that I didn't know all the things I didn't know. The book masterfully tortured me with a desire it refused to sate to pinpoint exactly how much his account distorted things.
My favorite aspect of the novel was its absurdism, especially in the long bizarre interrogations to which the hectoring Dino subjects both his mother and Cecilia. Unfortunately the conversations with Cecilia are the point where the mediocre 1963 film adaptation (which our book club also watched) is the most disappointing. In the film, the long interviews with Cecilia are truncated and Cecilia herself is rendered less Bartleby-esque. The movie does a better job with Dino's exchanges with his mother, played by Bette Davis, who is universally seen as the film's saving grace.
The other thing I liked about the book was Moravia's complicated play with vicariousness: Dino thinking about Cecilia with other men, Cecilia getting pleasure from giving pleasure, Dino's mother's will to control him, etc. It's very sophisticated and gets at something profound about desire's slippery propensity for sliding along social networks.
The story includes many meditations on boredom, but Dino uses the word idiosyncratically, to describe his condition of disconnection from or non-relation to the world. But is he really so uninvested? He gets caught in a cycle, that continues to the end of the book, of insisting that he has the upper hand in his relationship with his young lover Cecilia, only to once again debase himself in his maniacal desire to possess and control her. His alienation isn't so much from the world or the people in it as from himself, whom he barely seems to know.
By the 80% mark of the book, Dino's made so many claims about himself that don't add up that I hardly trust anything he says. At the same time, I felt that I didn't know all the things I didn't know. The book masterfully tortured me with a desire it refused to sate to pinpoint exactly how much his account distorted things.
My favorite aspect of the novel was its absurdism, especially in the long bizarre interrogations to which the hectoring Dino subjects both his mother and Cecilia. Unfortunately the conversations with Cecilia are the point where the mediocre 1963 film adaptation (which our book club also watched) is the most disappointing. In the film, the long interviews with Cecilia are truncated and Cecilia herself is rendered less Bartleby-esque. The movie does a better job with Dino's exchanges with his mother, played by Bette Davis, who is universally seen as the film's saving grace.
The other thing I liked about the book was Moravia's complicated play with vicariousness: Dino thinking about Cecilia with other men, Cecilia getting pleasure from giving pleasure, Dino's mother's will to control him, etc. It's very sophisticated and gets at something profound about desire's slippery propensity for sliding along social networks.
maledettaaaa's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
melinac's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Este es el primer libro que leo de Moravia, y me resultó fácil de leer y seguir, pese a que no hay necesariamente mucha trama, sigue siendo interesante estar dentro de la cabeza de nuestro protagonista, Dino (que, ya que estamos, es uno de los personajes más cerrados, cabeza duras, soberbios y egocéntricos que leí en mi vida, ¿por qué deberíamos creer que "sabe" lo que los demás personajes están pensando o sintiendo todo el tiempo? El personaje más acuariano que leí en mi vida *facepalm), un ex pintor rico que desprecia su riqueza, y que se siente alienado e incapaz de formar ninguna relación con nada externo a él, cosas, personas, tareas, etc. Cuando forma una relación con Cecilia, una joven modelo que trabajaba con otro pintor vecino a Dino, esa "incapacidad de formar relaciones" se transforma en obsesión tóxica (ah, pero el sostiene que sigue aburrido) que llega al punto de querer pedirle matrimonio con tal de poseerla y, por fin, "aburrirse de ella también" (*facepalm todavía más fuerte). En fin, interesante, sobre todo para quienes disfrutan de protagonistas desagradables.
chervbim's review against another edition
4.0
I was really into this, even though the characters were all unlikable and there wasn't really a plot and there was no resolution at the end and and and... I just liked this a lot. The style drew me in, kind of reminded me of "Nausea" but much more engaging. And Italian! God, this book was so Italian.
kejireads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
screen_memory's review against another edition
4.0
The major theme of Moravia's Boredom should need no introduction. The former artist, Dino, defines his boredom as a lack of relation to external things. He claims to have grown bored of his mother and the almost unconditional funds she offers him. He's grown bored of painting, bored of his studio, of his expensive sports car, and he grows immediately bored of his love interest, Cecilia, the former muse of a recently deceased artist whose nude portraiture consisted solely of portraits of Cecilia.
The irony of Dino's boredom, or perhaps the paradox of it all, is that Dino, despite his apparent loss of relation to and interest in certain things, pursues certain of them obsessively. Embarking from the initial delusion of discovering whether or not Cecilia truly loves him, he pursues her as a lover only so that he might grow bored of her after being assured of her love. Further delusions follow from then on: Dino relentlessly stalks Cecilia to confirm whether or not his suspicions of her infidelity are true; he funnels all of the money he receives from his mother into Cecilia's hands after their lovemaking to see if she is as venal as he suspects; he seeks her hand in marriage so that, with the ultimate symbolic affirmation of their love finally won, he might finally grow bored of her.
Dino's boredom is a nauseating sickness characterized by a seemingly fevered desire to regain his relation to external things. He interrogates his mother and Cecilia on separate occasions, seeking a greater understanding of their interior emotional world. Dino's boredom is perhaps nothing like a lack of relation to external things, but rather an obsessive fascination with them, a fascination that cannot be satisfied, moving him to recognize .
It is Cecilia who is truly bored and fails to recognize her total boredom precisely because of her boredom.
She is the muse of all men who she is or has been involved with, all of whom have spent fortunes on her, fortunes she gives away to other lovers, fortunes that might have aided her disabled father and her poor mother in moving out of their austere flat. She has no apparent interest in anything, and she responds to each of Dino's questions with her essentialist tautology: this is this, that is that - "What kind of room?" Dino might ask. "A room with a table, chairs, those sorts of things," she might say. She sees no importance in anything, nor does she see the importance of remembering anything.
She loves Dino for reasons she both cannot describe and doesn't care to describe. She recollects episodes of her past life with no details, no reference to anything, and is only forced to account for her past in her own peculiar way - informed by little to no relation to or recollection of anything - during Dino's recurrent interrogations. Cecilia is bored with her life to the utmost limits of boredom, while Dino fails to realize that he is nauseatingly bound to the things he claims to have resigned from. For fans of more psychological literature.
The irony of Dino's boredom, or perhaps the paradox of it all, is that Dino, despite his apparent loss of relation to and interest in certain things, pursues certain of them obsessively. Embarking from the initial delusion of discovering whether or not Cecilia truly loves him, he pursues her as a lover only so that he might grow bored of her after being assured of her love. Further delusions follow from then on: Dino relentlessly stalks Cecilia to confirm whether or not his suspicions of her infidelity are true; he funnels all of the money he receives from his mother into Cecilia's hands after their lovemaking to see if she is as venal as he suspects; he seeks her hand in marriage so that, with the ultimate symbolic affirmation of their love finally won, he might finally grow bored of her.
Dino's boredom is a nauseating sickness characterized by a seemingly fevered desire to regain his relation to external things. He interrogates his mother and Cecilia on separate occasions, seeking a greater understanding of their interior emotional world. Dino's boredom is perhaps nothing like a lack of relation to external things, but rather an obsessive fascination with them, a fascination that cannot be satisfied, moving him to recognize .
It is Cecilia who is truly bored and fails to recognize her total boredom precisely because of her boredom.
She is the muse of all men who she is or has been involved with, all of whom have spent fortunes on her, fortunes she gives away to other lovers, fortunes that might have aided her disabled father and her poor mother in moving out of their austere flat. She has no apparent interest in anything, and she responds to each of Dino's questions with her essentialist tautology: this is this, that is that - "What kind of room?" Dino might ask. "A room with a table, chairs, those sorts of things," she might say. She sees no importance in anything, nor does she see the importance of remembering anything.
She loves Dino for reasons she both cannot describe and doesn't care to describe. She recollects episodes of her past life with no details, no reference to anything, and is only forced to account for her past in her own peculiar way - informed by little to no relation to or recollection of anything - during Dino's recurrent interrogations. Cecilia is bored with her life to the utmost limits of boredom, while Dino fails to realize that he is nauseatingly bound to the things he claims to have resigned from. For fans of more psychological literature.
teafairy's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
kingkong's review against another edition
3.0
Hmm an atheist blank slate girl with a tiny waist, big boobs and massive thighs and ass that wants to just have sex all the time, no wonder he went crazy