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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Neglected Masterwork, Oct 26 2000
By A Customer
W. Somerset Maugham has long existed somewhat on the periphery of literary and critical respectability: "a first-rate second-rater," someone once called him. But the more I read Maugham the more I become convinced that this is a snobbish appraisal, derived perhaps from his extraordinary popular success (if it's popular, it can't be good) and, later, from revelations regarding his homosexuality along with some unpleasant personal details related by various biographers. But none of this should get in the way of a reader seeking out Maugham's best work---"Of Human Bondage," certainly, and the much-less-known "Mrs. Craddock.""Mrs. Craddock" is a stunningly powerful novel of one woman's compromises with the realities of love. Reminiscent on the one hand of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," and on the other of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," this novel has a vitality and brilliance of characterization all its own. Bertha, the heroine, is superbly rendered: a woman who is unable to understand until too late the nature of her emotional folly, a victim of her own self-imposed romantic delusions. Edward, her husband, is equally compelling: a fundamentally good man who has simply, in essence, married the wrong woman. Watching these two mismatched souls attempting to co-exist is engrossing, painful, and exhilarating. The story is solidly written in the usual Maugham plain style, and is just as relevant today as it must have been the year it was published. This "lost" Maugham novel---ignored even by many Maugham admirers---deserves a wider readership. Those interested in Maugham's fiction of this period, or in turn-of-the-century novels centered on women, owe it to themselves to try this unjustly neglected masterwork.
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by W. Somerset Maugham
by W. Somerset Maugham
