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Title: Existential Soap Opera
Review: As my review title indicates, I think of this novel as a an existential soap opera. It has tawdry romances, dramas, intrigues, centering mostly around shallow characters with predictable emotions. But through the main character, Michele, Moravia explores contemporary trends in modern Western culture, society, and thought.So this book is both a pleasantly engaging page-turner and a pleasantly engaging intellectual treat. It's still not as good as Moravia's later works, particularly Boredom and The Conformist, in sexiness, intelligence, or originality. But I still highly recommend it.
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