Contempt is a pretty good read, if not especially memorable. Moravia proves adept at crafting the penetrating psychological story that the great 20th Century Italian writers do so well, but his work in no way stands out. The plot is essentially about the disintegration of a young marriage as seen through the slightly warped perspective of the playwright-turned-film-writer husband. The narrative voice strikes an interesting chord somewhere between realism and delusion, with a narrator who is unreliable, but not in the completely distorted sense you see in novels like the Good Soldier. Moravia's voice probes fairly deeply, but is also very accessible.