The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography

Although Maugham's lives are hardly secret anymore, the author has done a diligent job of reviewing letters and journal entries newly available. Her prose is certainly not in the same league as WSM's but it is workmanlike and generally doesn't get in the way. However, the book becomes rather tedious because of her tendency to tell the reader what is in a letter and then quote the letter itself as well. And there is a great (overwhelming) listing of everyone who attended a dinner, an opening, a debauch...you name it.On a separate note, for which the author can not be blamed since she had no way to influence her subject's character, although WSM is described enumerable times as urbane, charming, delightful to me he comes off as a right swine (and not because of his sexual orientation. For decades I have read and enjoyed his work (although I've never read his plays); I'll never again be able to read them with the same pleasure.

This comprehensive biography of W. Somerset Maugham includes Brief sumaries of many of his plays, novels, and short stories, as well as a number of succinct portraits of some of his friends and lovers.

It has been years since I actually read Maugham but this book caught my eye and I actually found it to be very well written and interesting. Maugham wrote some big novels and many interesting stories that I think still hold up. Since reading the biography I have read several (and watched a few of the movies based on them). Maugham was a solid writer who knew a good story and how to tell it. His stories keep you interested and he almost always throws in a twist that works well without being farfetched. Hastings has done her homework and shows the development of the young man into a professional novelist, playwright and short story writer. Young writers should be interested in how she shows the way his own career took odd twists and turns. I wish she had done more on his craftsmanship. His life was also fascinating with the great variety of people he ran into. His sexual ethics make you wince and in the end one still believes that he was right that his reputation would be as first rate at the second tier. But the book is very well done.

There are several huge biographies of et, but this may well be the most readable of the lot. Selina Hastings does an excellent job of guiding us through Maugham's nearly century-long life and keeping us interested all along the way. I especially enjoyed the new info on "Rosie," Maugham's lover at the turn of the century and later the inspiration for his heroine in "Cakes and Ale." Lots of great pictures, too!

Excellent book. Maugham has been my favorite author for decades and I read his works over and over again. This biography is very well written, engaging, just personal enough (not trashy), respectful and honest about his strengths and weaknesses. I loved it and will reread it. Recommend highly if you're a Maugham-lover and even if you're not. Learned many things about him I never knew.

I am very satisfied with every aspect of this purchase.

I greatly respect the well researched and immensely detailed descriptions that Hastings presents. Her writing is elegant and easy much as Maugham's. While I learned a great many details about his life, and was amazed to learn of the extent of his travels and social connections to everyone of fame in his time, I gained little insight into the man himself. The book presents extensive detail but no analysis. Judging from the descriptions, Maugham was a far more colorful, complex, contradictory man than any of the characters in his books. Despite his uncanny perceptiveness of the characteristics and weaknesses of others, he seems to have had painfully little insight into his own motivations and actions. He delivered poignant descriptions of the ironies, deceptions, and scandals in the life's of others, yet he was incapable of seeing his deceptions, his weaknesses (e.g., for young boys, for fame, for self righteousness), his appalling treatment of his wife and only child, his immense snobbery, his self-indulgent ego, etc. After reading so much detail, after having learned the details of the menu of many dinners at his house, and learning to exhaustion everyone's name who visited him, I missed in the book an analytic reflection of the contradictions of his character. Disconcerting too was that Hastings relied too much on Maugham himself as a source. She uses the sparse material Maugham left in his notes and letters. Most of it he obsessively destroyed to prevent anyone from peering behind the screen. Thus, not surprisingly the reader gets very biased presentations of, for example, Syrie, Maugham's wife, who, for better or worse was a central figure in his entire life. Guided by Maugham's relentless and fanatical hatred for the wife, Syrie is portrayed by Hastings as a hysterical gold digger. However, by other accounts Syrie was also a person of exceptional stature, a self-made highly successful business woman and the foremost interior designer of her time. She was also a good mother to their only child, which cannot have been easy given Maugham's treatment of her. Maugham, however, was a lousy father and a horrid husband. Late in his life, much to the horror of anyone who knew him, he even renounced his daughter and wanted to disinherit her so he could instead leave his immense wealth to his lover whom he attempted to adopt as a son. A very twisted soul he was indeed. The book raises more questions than it answers. To make the book really compelling and to provide a deeper understanding of Maugham's soul, and perhaps, in that way of all twisted souls, Hastings should have considered how to present a better understanding of the man.

l This was a lively and enjoyable read, and offered a fascinating insight into a remarkable man. Very well researched and written and highly recommended to anyone who enjoys Maugham's work and gaining an insight into an earlier world.

excellent service. good quality book

It s a shame that Somerset Maugam's work has gone out of fashion. I have to ask the library to get them from the basement for me. I have read a lot of his books recently, see beyond the racism of his time, and get into the actual story he is writing. His life was colourful, he was bisexual and a secrent agent during the War (First).