Forty-one stories packed into 285 pages from Alberto Moravia sounds like a bargain; unfortunately, like most bargains, it is a trifle disappointing. Most of [the] stories [in The Fetish] have the kind of glitter, the polish, the touch of authority we expect from such a master-craftsman; read separately, in magazines, over a considerable period of time, the memory of them might be a brighter, more joyous experience than reading all of them through at a sitting, which produces a sense of staleness and reader's frustration. Inevitably one compares; to take a good contemporary example, Maugham's collected stories, which stand up to marathon reading in a way that Signor Moravia's do not. Why is this? What is missing? Probably that feeling, which Maugham conveys so forcibly, of the author's personal excitement and interest in his own story-telling.

"The Fetish" and other stories have an overall drabness, a monotonous undertone, as though the same pitiful tale were being told again and again. Love, despair, pride, communication between emotionally involved people, communication and the lack of it—these provide the basic themes. They are shavings, no more, from a skilled and prolific professional writer, fascinating in themselves as they spiral down from the expert hand, yet ultimately produce a feeling of loss like the bursting of those rainbowcoloured soap bubbles so creatively blown in childhood. "I write simply to amuse myself," stated Moravia in the Paris interview, and clearly these stories belong to that classification of intention, which of course is not to deny their entertainment value, nor overlook their small truths about personal relationships which motivate this collection. There's a lack of concern (and little humour) for the small pity of it all, and that, basically, distresses one about any work from Moravia.