Customer Reviews

UP AT THE VILLA ( Film Tie-in )

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Under the rubric of "Praise for William Somerset Maugham" on the first page of "Up at the Villa," none other than the New York Times calls this book "full of psychological and dramatic potentialities." To a large extent, this comment has merit. Maugham was nothing if not a writer full of dramatic flair, economy of language, and a penetrating psychical gift that enabled him to peer deep into the inner machinations of the human soul in all of its various splendors. His "The Razor's Edge" was, in my opinion, one of the best books written in the last century. "Up at the Villa" is another beautiful work of art; it contains all of the recognizable Maugham hallmarks but displays them in a short novella. It's entirely possible to read "Up at the Villa" in a couple of hours if one is so inclined. The first thing I noticed with this book was how little time it took for the author to completely grab my attention. Within a few pages, my enthrallment with the character of Mary Panton was complete.

"Up at the Villa" takes place in Florence, Italy shortly before WWII breaks out. A thriving colony of British expatriates spends each day and night basking in the warmth of the climate and attending endless parties where they reinforce each other's social position. The main character is Mary Panton, a young widow drifting into her early thirties without a concrete sense of direction. There is a lot of pressure for Mary to marry again, as her ravishing beauty draws all sorts of suitors out of the woodwork. One of the men who wishes to corral Mary is Edgar Swift, a distinguished British diplomat and old family friend who now hopes to take Mary with him to a new appointment as Governor of Bengal. One of Edgar's competitors is Rowley Flint, a dissolute bloke with money to burn and a fierce reputation as a ladies man. Mary's indifference to these men is apparent from the start; she considers Edgar's proposal only because of his social position. As for Rowley, she hardly considers him at all. Mary's beauty always brings her much attention, but it also brings out her strident vanity. When Mary meets a young Austrian exile by the name of Karl Richter, her beauty causes all sorts of problems, one of which could result in a legal entanglement of scandalous proportions.

There are more moral quandaries in this novella than in the entire Old Testament. Not only does Mary need to decide whom she should marry, she must deal with the emotional fallout of a personal calamity brought about by her overweening sense of self. Maugham masterfully moves the reader through the treacherous pitfalls of Mary's Florence experiences, and he does it in astonishingly few words. As I floated through the final few pages of "Up at the Villa," I remarked to myself that this prose style is the way I want to write myself: a clear, crisp style that conveys immense amounts of detail with precious few words. You won't find strings of compound verbs or unnecessary wanderings in this story. Within a few pages, you know the characters intimately, have a great sense of the surrounding atmosphere, and a profound understanding of Mary's situation.

I really have no idea why this book sat around the house so long before I finally read it. Since I have read Maugham before, I knew I had no reason to think I would not appreciate the story. Now that I got off my duff and read "Up at the Villa," I urge you to do the same. If you have never read Maugham before, this is a great place to start. If you do know the joys of this extraordinary writer, spend a few hours brushing up on the wonders of this author's magnificent abilities.

A beautiful widow in her early 30s faces a choice between marrying a older man for monetary comfort or waiting for love. When given a weekend to make the choice, she meets two men: a brash American and a down-on-his luck stranger. In a matter of hours, everything changes. Written with plenty of suspense and old fashioned romance, Up in the Villa is a quick, worthy read for anyone who dreams of being swept off his or her feet.

Somerset Maugham is a great story teller. Never pretentious or obscure, Maugham is a keen observer of human and social behaviour. His grasp of what makes people tick is instinctive, accurate and insightful. In "Up At The Villa", a straightforward novella in the romantic thriller genre, he doesn't miss a beat. His caricature of the self satisfied and prideful in Edgar Swift is a hoot ! Mary Panton, the novella's heroine, is flawed as a person but redeemed by compassion and principles. The film version takes a few liberties with the nationality of Rowley (he is English in the book but American in the movie) and embellishes the plot with twists and turns but remains faithfull enough to the spirit of the novel. The casting of Kristin Scott Thomas as Mary and James Fox as Edgar is also spot on. A quick and enjoyable read. Doesn't matter whether you read the book or watch the movie first.

There is no writer who captures the haugtiness of Edwardian upper class culture better than Maugham and in many of his writings dramatic tension derives from cultural and class contrasts between upper class English expatriots and the local people that they become involved with.

Here the protaganist is a young unmarried and very attractive woman staying in Florence at a friends Villa who draws attention from all of the men she encounters. One of the encounters results in a tragedy and the event and it's aftermath drives the story to it's quick conclusion.

Maugham writes dialogue that is quick, witty and obviously adaptable to the stage or screen since he was primarily known as a playwrite as well as a novelist.This short work is no exception.

The action proceeds quickly and this makes Up At The Villa a short but very satisfying book to read.

This is the story of a young widow and three men, a respectable older gentlement who wants to marry her, a poor violin playing refugee, and a sexy rogue with a bad reputation. A brief affair and a death reveal the complexities of these four people. This is a beautifully crafted story.

As short as Of Human Bondage is long and as prosaic as The Razor's Edge is profound, Up at the Villa fails to inspire the way these aforementioned works of genius or other such timeless tomes as Cakes and Ale or Moon and Sixpence.

This book, however, was not all bad. It was eminently enjoyable and, as all of Maugham's efforts, was a pleasure to read. Maugham's gift with the English language is unsurpassed and vastly underrated. Unfortunately, Up at the Villa just didn't have enough Maugham. Not enough characterization or plot or theme development as I would have liked and have grown accustomed to with the genius of Maugham. I have yet to see the movie with Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, although I'm sure I will in due time. Overall, if you thoroughly enjoy Maugham as I do, check it out at the library.

"That's what life's for - to take risks."
- Rowley to Mary

Its cute, its quick, its fairly entertaining....

But it's Maugham boiled down. He's the king of suffering... of moral qualms.... of quirky, rich, upper class characters.... but he's good in length..... this is almost too short.... too bam, bam, bam.... the characters moral failings never have time to develop....

I recommend going to a library and reading this book... it's too short to buy.... but buying others "Cakes and Ale" "The Razor's Edge" and "Of Human Bondage". He's a brillaint author but I can't get myself to trumpet the praise of this work....

I thought this novel offered an interesting look at how passion and spontaneity can develop into confusion and regret. The characters are well developed and have wonderful interactions with each other, especially Mary (the protagonist) and Rowley (the "unsavory" character). It is an enjoyable quick read, and the romance is set well against the suspenseful atmosphere.

W. Somerset Maugham

Up at the Villa

Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2004.
8vo. 120 pp.

First published by Doubleday Doran in 1941.

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It is a shame to write a long review for so short a novel; or a novelette, as Maugham himself once called it, or a longish short story if you are fan of that genre. Biographers and critics have always been only too eager to pour venom over this work: badly written, superficial, unworthy of the mature Maugham, shameful thing to publish as late as 1941 when the author was the most famous British writer in the world and had such classics like ''Of Human Bondage'' and ''Cakes and Ale'' behind him. Fascinating criticism, no doubt, but all these gentlemen miss one very important point: Maugham's own opinion. As usual, he was by far his best critic, if a little too modest in this case. To the best of my belief, the only place when Maugham wrote something about Up at the villa is the preface to the third volume of ''The Selected Novels'' (Heinemann, 1953). It makes a diverting read indeed. Maugham starts with the amusing incident how a lady commissioned him to write a piece for her American women's magazine and when he told her about a subject that he had long thought about, namely a woman who gives herself to a man out of pure pity, she was delighted with it. But she was also dismayed at the final product for it was not at all, she claimed, what her readers would want. Willie Maugham, having a lot of fun out of this anonymous lady, informs us that he has always been like a putty in the hands of women in distress: so he took his manuscript back. He finishes with his usual candour, confessing that he never attached any great importance to Up at the villa and he asks the reader for nothing more but to get an hour diversion from it. He was being too modest. For this ''novelette'' is much more than that.

The diversion is fully guaranteed, to start with, though the plot is certainly highly improbable. As a matter of fact, certain elements of the story are frankly incredible; Maugham himself admitted as much through the thoughts of his main heroine, Mary Panton: a ravishing beauty and not too mournful a widow who's using her friend's villa near Florence to recover, figuratively speaking, from the death of her husband, a confirmed drunkard if there ever was one. By the way, Mary is just another female character for whom Maugham is never given any credit by those who constantly accuse him of misogyny; his descriptions of her fresh colour and natural beauty, not to mention a good deal of compassion, must surely have been a pleasant thing for Maugham to write. Here she is in the remarkable company of two remarkably different men, both of whom incidentally offer her marriage: Sir Edgar, a typical empire-builder who has for many years been a star in colonial India and indeed has just been appointed a governor of Bengal; and Rowley Flint: scamp, rascal, womanizer and thoroughly bad lot according to the iron rules of society, but a guy with a surprising amount of pluck, determination and common sense: duality of human nature that always fascinated Maugham, stimulating him to create some of his most memorable characters; and so is the case here. In the center of this triangle from incongruous personalities lies the poor Austrian student and refugee Karl Richter. Nothing more about the plot need be said except than it all takes place in just a few days and it has completeness and brevity which Maugham alone can give in so short a space. It is not stretching a point too much to suggest that in this ''novelette'' Maugham came as close to the perfect style as anyone could possibly hope to. Not a single superfluous word can one find, not a single superfluous comma even. Everything is perfectly and at the same time beautifully constructed, as if it were an organ work by Bach or a piano sonata by Mozart.

How Maugham could draw the main characters - Mary, Rowley and Edgar - so fully and so vividly in so small a space is well beyond me. Yet, he did. None of them is simple or boring, nor devoid of unworthy motives or noble qualities. Maugham misses nothing from either world: a glance, a gesture, a chuckle, a smile, or a word from the outside, and a thought, a fear, a relief, a nightmare, a suspicion, a reflection, or a dream from the inside. His dialogue is as perfect as anything, and so is his simply unmatched, and justly famous, ability to describe a dramatic scene in action and especially in conversation. The second meeting between Mary and Edgar, to take just one instance, is surely one of the finest things Maugham ever wrote: both speak one thing but think quite another, until it finally comes to a showdown; rarely have Maugham written with such subtlety and insight while maintaining a most remarkable brevity and succinctness, not to mention that his dialogue has an almost constant streak of humour. Even episodic characters like Karl Richter or the maid Nina, though somewhat flat by definition, have from time to time a penetrating and quite revealing observation dedicated to themselves. Even the simplest and least interesting of the main characters, Sir Edgar, is far from the mere bunch of virtues he seems in the beginning. Sure, he is noble, upright, courageous, firm, just, etc., etc. He is totally dependable but in the end he is a victim of his own integrity. Or at least he would have been, had Mary not been too honest with both him and herself. For all his virtues, Sir Edgar has all prejudices and narrow-mindedness of his class, even thought it would never occur to him that they exist at all.

What of Mary herself? She has what most stunningly beautiful women so often lack, to begin with: character; but she is also surprisingly vulnerable, which is not a little touching, and, one suspects, not altogether insincere. Her singular compassion and deeply moving loving kindness always go hand in hand with a degree of hypocrisy and snobbishness that is not a little disconcerting, but a great deal more enthralling if you happen to be interested into the intricacies of human nature. In short, Mary Panton must rank among Maugham's finest attempts to look at the world through a woman's eyes. Certainly the gem among the characters is Rowley though. He is compelling from the very beginning to the very end of the story. One could hardly help liking him for his frankness and common sense, much less can one help admiring his determination to make the most of life or his showing a rare courage amidst a most shocking predicament. Maugham always loved drawing such full of contradictions characters, perfectly worthless from a social point of view but a jolly nice company; having as bad a reputation as possible in the eyes of the virtuous but certainly devoted friends one can always rely on no matter how grave the trouble. The beautiful thing about Maugham's writing, apart from the unparalleled force to bring to life such complex characters, is the fact that it is completely devoid of any moralising; it is full of understanding instead; cynical and cold it has often been called, sensible and compelling call it I. Rowley Flint is by all means one of Maugham's most enchanting creations, especially considering the very limited space on his disposal, rarely captivating combination of a jaunty rascal and a jolly good sport, no matter whether you want to have a drink and talk with him or to get rid of a highly inconvenient dead body with his help. Rowley's constant striving to taste every possible pleasure and break every rule there is in existence are, in a peculiar way perhaps, rather inspiring qualities. Maugham must have had grand time putting him down on paper. It was not for nothing that he gave him the unforgettable last words of the ''novelette'':

'So now what?'
'Well, if you insist on marrying me... But it's an awful risk we're taking!'
'Darling, that's what life's for - to take risks.'

Just like the monstrously incredible improbabilities of the plot, the inherent complexity of the characters comes under Maugham's pen so natural, with such a perfect symbiosis of narrative and dialogue, that I remain utterly convinced regardless of how unconvincing certain incident or motivation might seem at first glance. I venture to claim that no other writer but Somerset Maugham can give you so much in so little a space: dramatic and complete plot, wonderfully vivid and compelling characters, superb dialogue and even some short but evocative descriptions of nature: all that told in a rather breathtaking manner and in just 120 pages or so (indeed, the whole work takes only 74 closely printed pages in the third volume of ''The Selected Novels''). This is one of the things that makes Up at the villa a masterpieces as far I am concerned: it can easily be read in one sitting of an hour or two, for it is compulsively readable, but the drama is so condensed and the characters are so intense that they stay with me for quite some time longer than that. And they always remind me how curious, inconstant, insecure and fascinating the human animal is.

Scorned by critics and biographers - one wonders if they read it at all - Up at the villa is a masterpiece of fiction, whatever the genre, perfectly worthy of the mature Maugham. I do not believe anybody who cares about the works of the great British writer would be disappointed by this vastly neglected but quite charming and not a little thought-provoking trifle. Also, for newcomers to Maugham, Up at the villa is an excellent beginning, perhaps the best one together with his short stories.

Does one ever tire of the way Maugham writes? Well not me. I am a fan to the hilt and love everything he wrote. Without too many useless words, Maugham delves into the personalities of his characters. With few words and by their actions, we know who they are and what their motivations comprise.

A murder mystery with a pinch of sexuality as all his stories involve. It is a wonderful read, well worth the time. His language never fails to take me off to wherever he chooses. I loved this book.