SOURCE: A review of Conjugal Love, in Atlantic Monthly, April, 1951, pp. 77-8.

In the following assessment of Conjugal Love, Rolo praises Moravia's masterly study of the relations between a husband and wife.

The vagaries of love of the orthodox kind are brought under the microscope in a short novel by Alberto Moravia, Conjugal Love. . . . Moravia's two previous works have won him a sizable following and a good deal of critical praise. His special forte, to my mind, is his adult handling of sexuality in all its aspects, a talent which is relatively rare among Anglo-Saxon writers, however copiously or candidly they may write about sex. There is a vibrant awareness in Moravia's fiction of the erotic element in life—something of the sex-consciousness of D. H. Lawrence minus Lawrence's sex-mysticism. Moravia's powerful sensuality is altogether spontaneous and forthright, free of any taint of staginess; and his shrewd insight...