183 of 186 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lessons on life, December 20, 2006
This review is from: The Painted Veil (Paperback)
I wanted to read this book before seeing the movie, and I must say that I enjoyed it immensely. Having read most of Maugham's short stories but none of his novels, I was taken aback by the sweep and passion of this book, its strong moral center, and above all its sensitivity to feeling. Other readers have called this a feminist work, and so in a halting way it is, in that Kitty Fane, its central character, is a woman and Maugham looks unusually deeply into her soul. But at the beginning of the book she is almost the polar opposite of feminist, having been brought up by her ambitious middle-class mother to be pretty and vapid and catch a good husband. It is only after she has passed through the climax of the story that she begins to see that there can be better goals in life for a woman.
My surprise at the depth of Maugham's portrayal of Kitty is in contrast to what I have always seen as the emotional reticence of his male characters, who are portrayed rather in terms of action than of feeling; I see this as a by-product of the author's homosexuality in an era when this had to be kept hidden. Kitty's husband, Walter Fane, a young government doctor and bacteriologist in Hong Kong, though presumably heterosexual, is almost a caricature of this repressed type. Although he obviously has feelings, he is almost incapable of giving voice to them, and neither he nor Kitty can effectively communicate with one another. It is hardly surprising that Kitty should fall into an affair with a married colonial official who is all easy charm. Even when Walter discovers their liaison (masterfully evoked in the opening pages of the book), he remains cold and inscrutable; his response is to volunteer for service in a cholera-ravaged city in the Chinese interior and to take Kitty with him.
As I say, I have not yet seen the movie, only the trailer.* But I was struck by how perfectly Edward Norton captures the cold correctness of Maugham's doctor; I am only surprised that this should have become a star role, since in the novel Maugham keeps Walter very much in the shadows. My other impression from the trailer, the expansive beauty of the Chinese landscape, is also strongly evoked in the book, though I suspect that the movie paints the horrors of the cholera epidemic on a larger canvas and makes more of the background of civil war, which is barely hinted at by Maugham. Instead, once the Fanes reach their destination, the novel takes on a more intimate quality, which slightly disappointed me by playing down the ever-present danger that surrounds them.
But the trade-off is that the emphasis can shift to Kitty's tentative spiritual journey. Maugham's title comes from the first line of an unfinished sonnet by Shelley, "Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life," which implies a metaphysical intent. Here Maugham moves into territory that would later be claimed by Graham Greene; Kitty volunteers at an orphanage run by French nuns, and her first real lessons on life come from her exposure to these women so different from herself in faith and culture. By its mid-point, it seems that the novel is set to follow the familiar path of redemption through sacrifice.
And so it does, for a while. But Maugham, to his credit, does not go for the easy melodramatic conclusion. By a series of events that I cannot reveal here, the novel begins to retrace its steps and to wind down from its peak intensity. Kitty is forced not only to confront change, but to recognize in herself the ways in which she has NOT changed. Maugham risks anticlimax in taking this route, and perhaps does not avoid it entirely; but all the same it makes me respect him in a way that nothing else of his that I have read ever has.
[*I have now seen the movie on its first day of general release. It is handsome and well acted, but a very different experience from the book. The scenes in the Chinese interior have indeed been opened out as I surmised, and the character of Walter Fane much developed, moving into emotional territories only hinted at by Maugham. On the other hand, the earlier parts of the book are much compressed and the final sections omitted entirely. Perhaps the unusual shape of Maugham's novel would not have worked so well in movie terms, but it is still worth reading for that very reason.]
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good story. Great writing., January 7, 2007
This review is from: The Painted Veil (Paperback)
"The Painted Veil" is the beautifully told story of one self-absorbed woman and what it takes for her to discover joy in loving others. Every novel should have at least one character who changes and grows even half as much as this heroine. (Scene spoiler alert: My favorite scene is the last, when Kitty realizes she's always taken her father for granted, imagines how he must be feeling, and begins - finally - to treat him as a unique individual who has wants and needs separate from hers. When she can finally do this, their love is realized.)
I just saw the 2006 motion picture, and actually enjoyed it more than the book. The screenwriter enriched Somerset Maugham's classic in several ways: Kitty's husband Walter is given more depth such that his growth over the course of the story matches Kitty's. Also enriched is the backdrop. Not only is the Chinese town where much of the story takes place suffering a Cholera epidemic, but the Chinese Nationals are rising up against the British. This plot enhancement cranks up the tension of the story, and allows Walter's character to develop in a more complicated and ultimately satisfying way.
I highly recommend you read the book, then see the movie. You won't be disappointed!
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107 of 123 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Of marriage and freedom, July 29, 2001
The kernel of this novel dates back to 1895 when Maugham was twenty years old and stayed in Florence to learn Italian. He came across a story in which a "husband suspecting his wife of adultery and afraid on account of her family to put her to death, took her down to his castle in the Maremma the noxious vapours of which he was confident would do the trick; but she took so long to die that he grew impatient and had her thrown out of the window." It is around this core (which is not exactly the plot line of the novel, don't worry) that Maugham developed the story of Kitty Fane, a woman who is vain, superficial and in need of appreciation. It is a story that plays in Hong Kong and China in the 1920s. Maugham knew both places from his extensive travels in the South East but, characteristically for him, he does not spill much ink on descriptions of the landscape or the natives, which is a pity. He is much more interested in his fictitious characters.
As always, Maugham is a master of drawing characters who possess all the self-importance, weakness, and suffering that underlie human existence. His characterizations are so sardonically true that he was sued two times over the book by people in Hong Kong, and had to change the name of Hong Kong into Tching-Yen, and the name of one of the characters from Lane (innocent enough, one would think) to Fane.
I was wondering why this rather obscure novel by Maugham has received nothing but glowing five-star reviews by almost exclusively female readers. The reason is that this novel is about marriage and the restraints that marriage imposes upon passion. Also, it is a classic story of a woman's spiritual awakening. Two themes that appeal to female readers to such an extent that they tolerate Maugham's biting sarcasm and his rather unromantic view of life (he is quoted as saying that "habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous"). If there is an author who is not touchy-feely, it is W. Somerset Maugham. Marriage, he soberly concludes, is a matter of convenience. Passion, on the other hand, is a matter of inconvenience: it lurks untamed behind "the painted veil which those who live call life". What is left? Faith? Maybe, I think Maugham would say, but most people are not humble enough to be truly religious ("no egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul" is another quote by the master).
"The Painted Veil" is well worth reading. However, it suffers a bit from Maugham's self-assured way of portraying people and constructing a plot. It is a well-told story, but it is not a first rate novel. I think the problem is that Maugham's characters in this book are too one-dimensional which works well in a comedy of manners, but not in a book that wants to discuss matters like love, passion, marriage, life and spiritual growth in a serious way.
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