by W. Somerset Maugham
A short bonbon from Maugham. Maugham himself calls it a novelette, but it's really a novella, 30,364 words (I counted them). Anyway, a young and fabulously beautiful widow, Mary Panton, has gotten away from London and memories of a bad marriage and is living in the Italian villa of some friends, in ...
Wow, Maugham seems to have written this in a hurry - was it my bad edition or his hastiness that had Edgar brown-eyed at the beginning of the book and blue-eyed by the end of it? Anyway, a rather shallowish, yellowish sort of novel. I can't bring myself to give less than 3 stars, but this was not th...
A charming novella about a widowed socialite on holiday at her friend's villa in Florence, Italy. Not widowed for long Mary Panton has another potential husband on the horizon. Edgar Swift a life long friend of the family and quite the older man visits Mary at the villa to propose marriage before h...
If I needed to sum up this book in a phrase (I'm not sure what such an occasion might be) I would be torn between going with "It seemed like a good idea at the time" and (if I were in a meme-mood) a solid "Well that escalated quickly".
I remember being in a café with a friend once when a guy walked in who obviously had some kind of mild disability to do with his legs – he hobbled over to a table and sat down heavily, and then looked around him at the greasy spoon with an air of deep depression. Amy stared at him and sighed and sai...
A pleasing - if slight - tale. This is the fourth book I have read by [a:W. Somerset Maugham|4176632|W. Somerset Maugham|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1281475888p2/4176632.jpg], and follows [b:Of Human Bondage|31548|Of Human Bondage|W. Somerset Maugham|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347260157s/3154...
While a big fan of Maugham, this short novel presents a rather melodramatic and difficult to buy plot. Add in some rather unappealing characters and there is not much to recommend. I'm sure I could write about a lot of themes, but if this was written by some unknown writer I would give it little tho...
Written during WWI and set in pre-war Italy, this is the tale of a young, widowed gentlewoman. Mary married for love only to watch her husband's disintegration; when he died, it was a mercy. She took what was left of their money and retired to the Italian countryside, where she led a quiet, fairly...
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