SOURCE: "Precarious Balance of Opposed Demands," in Commonweal Vol. LXIV, No. 21, August 24, 1956, p. 520.

In the following review of Bitter Honeymoon and Other Stories, Greene applauds Moravia's ability to present characters as real people.

The name of Alberto Moravia is not a new one to American readers. His novels have been published in this country as a matter of routine, and he is to us a writer whose biting, analytical realism matches a modern mood. That mood has prevailed nowhere more strongly than in Moravia's native Italy where the ruptures and griefs of our age have struck with stunning impact. Yet Moravia never joined the post-war preachers. In novels like The Woman of Rome, he catches not the tone of violence, but its debilitating effect upon persons. His style, however, always emerges from the alleyways and bordellos of its passage untouched and uncompromised.

Now Bitter Honeymoon makes Moravia's short...