Why I'm reading no further in Arturo's Island

Sorry to say that 100 pages in (about 1/3) I'm through with Elsa Morante's 1957 novel, Arturo's Island. It started w/ such promise - a classic work by a well-respected Italian author, the "namesake" of the even more famous Elena Ferrante - but there are so many things that have troubled me about the first third of the novel, notably the mean-spirited contempt for women on the part of all of the major characters and in fact a father who criminally neglects and care for and education of his child (Arturo), that I just can't go on. And in fact, though we "must not say so," this novel, "friends, is boring" (I'm re-purposing a line from Berryman, just for kicks). I've just finished a long section in which A gets to know the new teenage wife of his father and engages her in long discussion about such, to me, uninteresting topics as Are there ghosts? And if so should we be afraid of them? The plot, after the initial set-up - boy living on his own on an island - is getting nowhere and the characters, are flat and dull. What this novel needs, IMHO, is a push in one direction or the other: either a realistic narrataive about the struggles of a young, neglected boy  (and for that matter a not-much-older, also neglected woman who happens to be his stepmother) to understand themselves and to survive in their world - and maybe include some jeopardy or obstacles to overcome - so far there are none - or make it more of an allegory or fantasy, with island as a representation of a deracinated world, a world without women, and a study of the effect of the introduction of a woman to this society, maybe something like a Garden of Eden story or a parable about dominance and oppression. So far I see none of these developing and I'm moving on to another novel. For anyone who wants to weigh in - please tell me what I'm missing.