W. Somerset Maugham- The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil

Vintage

W. Somerset Maugham

1925

Other Maugham Reviews- The Magician - The Moon and Sixpence - Cakes and Ale - The Narrow Corner - The Razor's Edge

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."

One of the things I like the most about keeping this obsessive blog flowing is the ability to look back at the past few years and map out my own progress, altogether giving me a better understanding of my typical reading habits. On top of that, it stops me from finishing one book and rushing straight into another, instead forcing me to more fully contemplate each book with the goal of producing a blog review so that I feel like I've achieved something. No author has benefited more from this process under the gaze of my critical eye than one W. Somerset Maugham (I'm sure he'd be very proud), whose bibliography first captured my imagination almost three (!) years ago with the hastily-reviewed The Razor's Edge. Since that fateful moment I've become more and more appreciative of each Maugham book I've read, with the pinnacle standing as the sublime The Moon and Sixpence.

Furious Maugham

Still, despite all that, when I sat down to begin reading The Painted Veil (chosen randomly from the four Maugham books on my to-read pile) I wasn't expecting to do something I haven't done since 2007 with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and sit and read the damn thing start to finish (well, with the odd break to make coffee and such)- and I only did that with Potter because I had a six hour window before the book's owner, who had just purchased it on midnight release, took it away on a bus journey, so that's my excuse. But anyway, I didn't intend to read The Painted Veil so quickly, but found it so engrossing I couldn't help myself, and at roughly 250-pages it was just the right length to finish in around 2-3 hours. Oh, and before I started reading I dropped my copy and broke the spine, so I had to literally hold it together to read.

It's not even as if I was blown away to the point where The Painted Veil became my new favourite Maugham novel. For the first thirty-or-so pages I thought I was set to be very disappointed, as Maugham led me down a false path in regards to the genre before opening up into his usual quality. Written in the third-person, The Painted Veil is the story of lead protagonist Kitty Garstin, a pretty young girl living amongst the British gentry of colonial Hong Kong. The opening segments of the book duped me into assuming the worst, that this book might be an uncomplicated romance novel. Maugham described Kitty, unhappy with her boring, inattentive scientist husband Walter, throwing herself into the arms of the witty and dashing (but also married) Charles Townsend- and all that was left, seemingly, was for them to find a way to get free of their partners (what with divorce being difficult back then and infidelity being illegal) and they'd be set for a future together.  

Pocket Books

When Kitty spills the truth of her affair, Maugham finally pulls back the wool from his reader's eyes to reveal the characters in a far more detailed light. Kitty, reveals her naivety by failing to realise Charles is simply one cad of many, promising Kitty a future life together to get her into bed. Walter, meanwhile, transforms under the realisation he is a cuckold, abandoning the image of a loving, devoted husband to reveal himself as cynical, dangerously intelligent, and unpredictable. He tells Kitty that he is to travel to China in a seemingly-selfless attempt to use his medical knowledge in the fight against a deadly outbreak of cholera. With nowhere else to go, she follows him to the sight of a convent acting as a make-shift hospital, where death is a constant presence.

Maugham uses these morbid and depressing surroundings and its characters to effect a transformation in Kitty, to replace her immature naivety with tougher worldly experiences. The eccentric new characters Kitty meets here essentially shape her personality, giving her increased strength through opening her up to alternate ideas about the world. Maugham's carefully-selected prose is outstanding and compelling,  shifting the his writing style to represent the changes experienced within Kitty. I mostly followed and enjoyed her transformation, mostly admiring Maugham's ability to hold such a delicate, changing character study so carefully, but by the end I must admit I hadn't been completely sold on the character, mostly because despite growing as a person as she does, Kitty still has the propensity to cry at every available opportunity, which became somewhat annoying closer to the end of the novel.

I think that's down to Maugham's insistence on never making his central characters too appreciable- he avoids a predictable heroic outcome or much of a happy ending by resisting the temptation to ultimately make his creations too successful, leaving the reader ambiguous as to their eventual fate. His character development is so focused that I think Maugham would have  done himself a disservice through writing a happier ending; as always he leaves the reader with plenty to contemplate and no hard answers. Though I raced through the book I wasn't left with the same sense of thoughtful awe that I was with Moon and Sixpence or The Narrow Corner- part of that because I wasn't as emotionally invested in the central characters- probably because, as good as Maugham is, I can't buy into his portrayal of female characters as I do his males.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend The Painted Veil as anyone's first Maugham book since there are better ones available, but after I had become immersed in his style and themes from prior books this was another interesting take on his central themes of human obsession and spiritual discovery.