Unlike Comfort Me With Apples and PostSecret, which I breezed through in a matter of hours apiece, Of Human Bondage took some serious application.
It’s not that it was a difficult read, just 446 densely packed pages in this edition, and is somehow a both skimming and minute account of a life in the … 1880s?

I really enjoyed the beginning a great deal, but it sort of bogged down in the character’s abject stupidity about a woman for a while and …

I don’t even know what to say about this book. (People want to publish these reviews?)

Let’s see. Starts when the principle character is about 5, maybe younger, and goes through until he’s 30. He tries out a variety of scholastic and career plans (ahead of his time, perhaps), including a sojourn in Paris to study art. Ends up in London, studying medicine, falling in love with hopeless women, failing to notice the good ones, finally finds love, a future, etc.

The writing is quite pleasant, straightforward and emotionally engaged with the characters. It looks into the heart of human frailty and flaws without ever getting exceedingly heavy.

It’s an interesting portrait of an era. I don’t know if I’d recommend it especially, it’s not … exceedingly different from anything else out there…

So yes.

But don’t hold that against it. It’s actually a readable classic. It follows the life of Phillip Carey, from rural England, to Germany, to Paris, to London, and a few other places. Along the way, it makes several interesting points about public education, art, love, and much more. Please, please, please don’t avoid this book just because it’s a classic, or because it’s over 600 pages, or because it wasn’t written in the last ten years. It’s good, I promise.

It starts out draggy and slightly annoying but the main character gets rather more bearable at the end.

And we’re done… Maugham is painful sometimes… never one to hold to the “show, don’t tell” maxim. But, all in all, worth it, in the end.