SOURCE: "Novels on Several Occasions," in The Hudson Review, Vol. III, No. 4, Winter, 1951, pp. 611-19.

In the following excerpt, Frye commends Moravia's adroit use of symbols in Two Adolescents and applauds the writer as one who "still clings in technique to the old traditions of novel writing. "

Each of Moravia's stories of Italian schoolboys [in Two Adolescents] deserves the higher compliment of being called a story that you can put down. One pursues a clumsy and faked narrative as one gets through a crowd on a sidewalk, in haste to be rid of it—a point often overlooked by those who sit up all night over mystery stories. Moravia fits normal life: one can drop his Agostino or Luca anywhere with a coherent structure already in one's mind, secure in the writer's ability to continue it properly. Nothing happens to Agostino except that boredom, bad company and ambiguous...