SOURCE: A review of Two Adolescents, in Commonweal, July 28, 1950, pp. 395-96.

In the following excerpted review of Two Adolescents, Cogley praises Moravia for his subtle moralism and bitter commentary on modern society.

Even the most doggedly prurient won't be disappointed with [Moravia's] two adolescents. Both of them, Agostino and Luca, have their problems—and, as anyone who has ever been one knows, the deepest concerns of adolescents are rarely bound up with solid geometry or endruns, pious literature to the contrary notwithstanding.

But there is more to Moravia's work than meets the leering eye. There is power and delicacy in these two stories and a certain subtle moralism. Each of them in its way is a bitter comment on modern society. Each of them gives witness to the modern malaise, the self-loathing that marks the age.

Agostino tells of a young innocent, thirteen, the sheltered son of a...