A review by brughiera
Ragazzi di vita by Pier Paolo Pasolini

4.0

I struggled to get into this book, finding the characters alien and the language almost impenetrable, but was glad I persisted. Pasolini wanted to relate events and people as he had experienced them in his sojourn in Rome in the early 1950s and the rough language and the petty criminal activities carried out do give a shock of realism to the story which would be difficult to achieve in any other way. The narrative style reveals a deep sympathy with the characters and helps to explain the nature of the desperation and poverty which drives them to act as they do. Indeed, in addition to the obscenity for which Pasolini was unsuccessfully prosecuted on the appearance of this book, his sympathy with the underclass and mistrust of bourgeois values , as represented by the evolution of Riccetto, underline the revolutionary nature of his thought at the time.