SOURCE: "Moralist Without an Ideal," in Commonweal, Vol. LXXI, No. 25, March 18, 1960, pp. 679-80.

In the following mixed review, Dunlea finds the tales contained in The Wayward Wife and Other Stories absorbing, but not as impressive as Moravia's earlier works of short fiction.

It is not perhaps by accident that Alberto Moravia has become Italy's most internationally acclaimed contemporary novelist and that he should at the same time be a maverick in Italian letters. For one thing, Italian writing had so long stood shy of the main literary currents to the north, whereas Moravia has channeled these into his work with a will; for another, he has allowed himself to become obsessed with sex to a degree which can only be viewed as eccentric in a country where a sense of measure survives in the general approach to the problems of sex. Moreover, the esthetic conservatism of Benedetto Croce...