Customer Reviews

Catalina

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A solid comedy. A fun and insightful examination of Christianity.

"Nobody ever died of love," says Doña Beatriz, the prioress of the nunnery where the Virgin Mary appears to Catalina. While thinking she's only attempting to convince Catalina to give up her unquenchable thirst for her young lover, Diego, Beatriz actually reveals her own doubly hollow soul with this line. First, she herself did die of love. She died when the young priest Blasco did not leave his order to pursue the bashful looks she gave him every morning at mass when she was a girl. But more significantly, this woman who purports to be Christ's servant on earth fails to recognize that the very one she heralds as the savior of the world died of nothing if not of love (Maugham uses "of" here as Spanish speakers use "de." We might use "from" or "out of." This usage gives a bit of an exotic feel to the passage, while allowing the author to play with "of." "As a result of" and "out of" are both valid ways to interpret it, making the line rather nuanced.). She replaced amorous love with the love of her savior, but somewhere in the midst of 16th-century Spain she lost even that.

The novel is largely about gaining fresh perspectives on life and redemption. Blasco finds a new perspective about his Greek friend Demetrios. Beatriz foils her own attempt to bring Catalina into the convent by realizing that salvation is knowable outside her nunnery's walls. Most notably, however, Catalina finds a fresh perspective every time she goes on stage-the words she speaks might be the same from performance to performance, but the audience is always different, creating a new performance every time.

From the Christian perspective, very little of what Maugham writes in this novel is controversial. For instance, everybody agrees that burning infidels at the stake is not what Christ had in mind for his Church. Yet Maugham first goes about creating a world (the Inquisition) in which there is order, in which the reader can find a place for herself (whether that of insider or outsider). Then once the world is established, it is chinked piecemeal until the absurdity of it all is plain.

An especially nice touch is the introduction at the end of the novel of an unnamed character who is very clearly Don Quixote. Maugham uses Quixote as a parallel to the Church. While insane in his demeanor and behavior, Quixote does deal with significant issues like love and virtue. Maugham writes that people around Quixote are amazed that someone who acts so oddly is able to eloquently discuss such meaningful things.

The Church is in the same position as Quixote, according to Maugham. On the one hand, the Church has done some dubious, even horribly sinful things. Yet, there is still truth to be had by her people. The Inquisition doesn't negate the redemption Christ offers. Killing dissidents is the wrong way to go about portraying love, but humankind's (and the Church's) need for redemption is precisely the point.

Overall, the novel is definitely worth a read. I have a few criticisms, but my main one is Maugham's sloppy use of pronouns. "He" is too often left vague. While that can enhance certain passages, it is regularly unnecessary and often distressing. But find a copy and read it for yourself.

I read this book about 25 years ago and at the time thought it was the best book I'd ever read. I lent it to someone who I'll refer to only as "Moca" in a momentary lapse of reason, and have course never seen it again. I really want to find and read another copy. It's an enchanting story of a divinely blessed young woman who, apparently, has been chosen by God to fulfill a life to the fullest that serves `Him" best. All this is set to the backdrop of the fervent exploits of the Spanish Inquisition.

Despite overwhelming pressure from the devout and self-righteous who claim to know what's best for her, she follows her own path and does indeed live to fulfill her divinely endowed potential. Religious hypocrisy is exposed for what it is in this intricately subtle and heart warming story of one girl's triumphs in the face of seemingly daunting dogmatic forces arraigned against her. "Catalina, I love you! I want you in my life again, please come back to me."

Believe me ... She's and absolute Treasure!

I found this late novel by Somerset Maugham to be a very entertaining portrayal of 15th century Spain. At the height of the inquisition a young girl has a vision that transforms her life and the life of many others. Maugham explores how in an age of compulsory belief there remain those who manipulate circumstances for worldly ends. His characterizations of the inhabitants of this small Spanish city include three brothers whose lives converge around the young girl's experience after a long separation. One is a the Bishop of Segovia, one a respected soldier and the 3rd a simple baker. Other characters include a manipulative prioress in charge of the local convent, a tailor and a drunken playwright.

The first half of the novel is less fanciful then the later chapters as other reviewers have pointed out but I didn't find the theatrical ending a detraction from the overall effect of this book. Admittedly this is not Maugham's masterwork but he was a remarkable writer and in his hands this small Spanish city and the lives of the inhabitants comes to life.

Please note - spoilers within.

'Catalina', published in the late 1940s, is one of Somerset Maugham's last novels. If nothing else, it offers incontrovertible proof that he was a bitchy old misanthrope who had no more business writing a 'romance' than Helen Fielding would have writing a car maintenance manual.

Writing simple characters who love and are loved seems to be beyond him. There are moments in the story where it drifts into the mythic, where a magic realism suffuses the action and it becomes almost a fairytale. At those times, one sees the potential. Unfortunately these are only glimpses, and it soon slides back into curdling misanthropy.

In Maugham's world, there are two kinds of people: those who think they are virtuous but are really dark-hearted, and those who recognise their dark-heartedness and embrace it. We're either cheerful knaves or hypocritical knaves, but never anything more than knaves. Cynicism is a virtue and piety is always false.

Beyond Maugham's hatred for all things good and holy, there's an issue, too, with the actual writing. The opening paragraph begins thusly:

"It was a great day for the city of the Castel Rodriguez. The inhabitants, wearing their best clothes, were up by dawn. On the balconies of the grim old palaces of the nobles rich draperies were spread and their banners flapped lazily on the flagpoles. It was the feast of the Assumption, August the fifteenth, and the sun beat down from an unclouded sky. There was a feeling of excitement in the air."

You see? It's about as adroit as the average schoolchild's "What I Did On My Summer Holidays" essay. The metaphors are cliched, and the sentence structure is terrible - the third one especially so. Coming from the same man who composed such beautiful language as that found in 'Of Human Bondage' and 'Cakes and Ale', it's all the more of a disappointment.

It's in its last chapters that 'Catalina' gets actively unhinged, as opposed to simply misconceived. It begins as Catalina escapes with her lover from the evil machinations of the Bishop and the Prioress. They experience a series of odd miracles, which have all the grandeur of The Miracle Of The Jar of Pickles That's Hard To Open Suddenly Opening Easily, or The Miracle Of The Lost Carkeys Turning Up. All this leads them into getting married in the first little church they come across, with the Virgin Mary rematerialising, like the Fairy Godmother in a bad pantomime, to act as witness. Then they're off again, pausing briefly to consummate their marriage in the woods, before they bump into Don Quixote.

Yes, Don Quixote. Maybe Maugham had had one too many bovrils and was beginning to hallucinate. His fairly straightforward story suddenly takes on a silly, light-hearted tone. The characters start to slow down and become aimless, like musicians indulging in a jam session following a successful concert. It all falls apart and eventually limps to an unsatisfying conclusion.

If you want to read good Maugham, read `The Razor's Edge'. `Catalina' is an easy read with an often amusing little story, but almost all of the rest of Maugham's oeuvre is better.

The novel has an excellent first half, even though it seemed to take a number of pages before I could work out which century we were in.

It is possible to feel something of the fear of the Spanish Inquisition, and the horror engendered by the Bishop and former inquisitor, who was at once devout and compassionate, yet at the same time indescribably cruel. To me this is the crux of the book - how men are capable of the worst, but for what seem to be the best reasons. It plausibly portrays how no man thinks he is evil.

And it gets well into the stupidity of institutionalised religious dogma, and the lengths to which it can drive irrational behaviour. Perhaps this is even more relevant to us today than when Maugham was writing it.

As one of your reviewers has already pointed out, the final sections of the book are quite different in tone from the beginning. We are in more of a make-believe world where some of the earlier realities of life have vanished, and things become more sugar coated. Maugham is doing this to continue with some valid earlier points about what is or is not a "good" life, and so the final few pages are much better than might be anticipated as you go through the "elopement" episode, which has already been criticised by some of your earlier reviewers.

I'd suggest this book is a failed masterpiece. A younger Maugham would quite probably have made more of it. Nevertheless it's intriguing and thought provoking - well worth a read.

According to jacket flap:

During the Inquisition, a young girl is cured of lameness by a miracle, and other miracles follow. Saintliness and cynicism result. A winner by the famous author. Vintage rare hardback, 275 pp.