This was a beautiful account of one man's spiritual journey away from God and back again. St. Augustine had had a Christian upbringing as his mother St. Monica was a pious Christian woman, but he fell away from the faith when he went away to school and became overly occupied with worldly ambitions and pleasures. Given how common this trajectory still is today, it was surprising how familiar his story seemed when it was written 1,700 years ago.
Many have commented on how unnecessarily nitpicky St. Augustine seems to be about sin, like when he talks about the incident with the pears when he was a child. While the pears in themselves are a minor thing, you have to admit that there is something very disordered about a child stealing pears, not primarily because they look good and he wants to eat them, but because he enjoys the act of stealing. It's the difference between pursuing a good thing in the wrong way and enjoying evil for its own sake. One would think that any parent aware of such a tendency in his child would consider it a serious fault and take steps to correct it instead of dismissing it as childish pranks.
The autobiographical part of the <i>Confessions</i> is in Books 1-9, and then the 10th book is an interesting read about the nature of memory--at the end of which is his most famous (and one of my favorite prayers): "Late have I loved you." In Books 11-13 he gets into philosophical and theological matters that were way beyond me, so I just skimmed through that part.
I read the French edition translated by Robert d'Andilly, which was beautifully clear and easy to read. I'm sure this book has been translated into most languages by now.
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