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Up at the Villa W Somerset Maugham 9780099478324 Books

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Up at the Villa W Somerset Maugham 9780099478324 Books

I’ve been reading a great deal of W. Somerset Maugham lately; and I daresay it will continue. His tales of the human condition – of heartfelt mistakes and foolish blunders – juxtaposed against the matter-of-factness of imperialism in turn of the century Victorian England make for charming stories. They are so naturally international – about a time when Englanders thought of the world as their own and acted accordingly – that they teem with an unpretentious multi-culturalism.

These days we are accustomed to reading political thrillers or crime stories set against the backdrop of this-or-that exotic location; authors attempting to prove their grandiloquence through expert, almost surgical use of the foreign. As if to show that simply through their ability to write about a dark corner of the world, the significance of their book is proven; and their use of these locations as the backdrop for grand moments of imperial import – this time American – confirm the multi-culturalism of the American artist in the new world. Yet somehow they do not ring true; they seem contrived, thereby losing their worth.

Maugham’s novels shine because they do no emphasize the exotic in far-away places and try and shock with bizarre cultural rituals or the important geopolitical realities of life lived in significance in faraway places. His novels are in fact the opposite, as they emphasize the constancy of British civilization which was effortlessly employed even in the furthest corners of her empire.

His stories are those of everyday British citizens who live ordinary lives – fraught with mischief and mistakes – as they carry out their business, live and love. In Up at the Villa, Maugham tells a story about a woman widowed from an unsatisfying marriage and who makes a careless mistake while on holiday in Florence that upends her life entirely. Rain is the story of a British missionary returning from furlough to his mission in the South Sea Islands when he confronts a worthy adversary in the form of a harlot from Hawaii and is bested in his attempts to convert her. Mackintosh is the tale of a colonial administrator of a small island in the pacific who misinterprets the changing times, and loses his life in the process.

And there are many, many others.

Each of these stories is so full of humanity, abounding in emotion and passion for life lived more abundantly; of the richness offered by the world around us; lives a spirit occasionally sweet but more often with a bitter bouquet, served indiscriminately in chalices both simple and majestic. Of the potential for great opportunity and of failure; of the ecstasy of forbidden and sometimes sordid love and the promise of redemption or at least the gentle salve of forgetting. These are Maugham’s stories, upon a canvas as vast as the world around us.

I hope you pick up a book by W. Somerset Maugham, to find as I often do a new perspective or a refreshing moment. You will find yourself better for it.


Tags : Up at the Villa [W. Somerset Maugham] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Set in a villa in the hills above Florence, this moving novel reveals the power of desperate love. Mary Panton ignores her desires as she contemplates her loveless marriage,W. Somerset Maugham,Up at the Villa,Vintage Classics,0099478323,Classic fiction,Fiction General,Fiction

Up at the Villa W Somerset Maugham 9780099478324 Books Reviews

Fast shipping!! Can't be without this book and I usually give it to a friend after I retread it. This book keeps you on the edge of your chair, bed,
car seat. It's not a long book but it's packed full of suspense, great characters, and wonderful descriptions of the Italian countryside. Even though it's suspencefull, it's also an upbeat book and Somerset Maugham knows women's feelings in and out (men's too). That's a rare quality
in a writer. JUST BUY IT, ITS GREAT!!
This book began as a period novel set in a playground of the wealthy. A young woman plans to make a safe and very comfortable marriage with an admired military leader. Suddenly the effects of an earlier mass European migration became apparent and, following an intensely romantic scene with moonlight, beautiful gardens, et cetera, it descended into darkness and a death. The rest of the novel twists and turns as the ramifications of that death on her proposed marriage become apparent and she discovers other possibilities. Maugham could certainly write; the intensely romantic scene referred to above is so lucid I felt like I was part of the scene.
My first reaction was a yawn........not much happening here! The slow, deep rhythms of rich storytelling soon caught me and carried me into a recreation of the slower, more innocent time before television, before the frenetic mental functioning of the one minute ad and the 10 minute story entered our lives. These experiences and responses are those of a culture unchallenged by want of luxury and not blunted by cinematic carnage and bad behavior, people who are between wars and shocked that they should be restricted by crass politics. And so we have a story of a woman as innocent as a child in her depravity, as blind as possible in her choices......still a story told with recognition of beauty. The story itself is, however, blind in it's own time.....a writer of today would see the enabler in her, and understand the probable end of her romantic decision to leave with a man who has already hit her once and does not pretend to much of anything good. Excellent book if you are able to stand outside your "modern self" for a time.
W. Somerset Maugham's, "Up at The Villa" is a wonderful, entertaining, thought provoking novel. Mary Panton, a wealthy, beautiful English widow, lives in her friend's villa overlooking Florence, Italy. In a strange twist of fate, the very thing she jokes about a few hours earlier suddenly becomes a nightmarish reality. The novel is amazingly suspenseful, lucid, and beautifully written. I highly enjoyed this novel.
Although published in 1932, Maugham's account of an elderly doctor's encounters while traveling between islands in the south pacific, doesn't feel that dated. Maugham always manages to create realistic, interesting characters in any setting, and this book is no exception. A grizzled, dodgy skipper and a young Australian man ostracized by his family travel with the doctor in a boat on the open seas and are forced to land on a sparsely inhabited island. There they meet a Danish trader, a farmer and his young daughter. What ensues is the stuff of what Maugham is very good at physical descriptions of the people and the island, reflections on life and the universal mystery of, as written in one of Gaugain's paintings "who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?" An excellent read by a master storyteller that is still relevant in the 21st century.
I’ve been reading a great deal of W. Somerset Maugham lately; and I daresay it will continue. His tales of the human condition – of heartfelt mistakes and foolish blunders – juxtaposed against the matter-of-factness of imperialism in turn of the century Victorian England make for charming stories. They are so naturally international – about a time when Englanders thought of the world as their own and acted accordingly – that they teem with an unpretentious multi-culturalism.

These days we are accustomed to reading political thrillers or crime stories set against the backdrop of this-or-that exotic location; authors attempting to prove their grandiloquence through expert, almost surgical use of the foreign. As if to show that simply through their ability to write about a dark corner of the world, the significance of their book is proven; and their use of these locations as the backdrop for grand moments of imperial import – this time American – confirm the multi-culturalism of the American artist in the new world. Yet somehow they do not ring true; they seem contrived, thereby losing their worth.

Maugham’s novels shine because they do no emphasize the exotic in far-away places and try and shock with bizarre cultural rituals or the important geopolitical realities of life lived in significance in faraway places. His novels are in fact the opposite, as they emphasize the constancy of British civilization which was effortlessly employed even in the furthest corners of her empire.

His stories are those of everyday British citizens who live ordinary lives – fraught with mischief and mistakes – as they carry out their business, live and love. In Up at the Villa, Maugham tells a story about a woman widowed from an unsatisfying marriage and who makes a careless mistake while on holiday in Florence that upends her life entirely. Rain is the story of a British missionary returning from furlough to his mission in the South Sea Islands when he confronts a worthy adversary in the form of a harlot from Hawaii and is bested in his attempts to convert her. Mackintosh is the tale of a colonial administrator of a small island in the pacific who misinterprets the changing times, and loses his life in the process.

And there are many, many others.

Each of these stories is so full of humanity, abounding in emotion and passion for life lived more abundantly; of the richness offered by the world around us; lives a spirit occasionally sweet but more often with a bitter bouquet, served indiscriminately in chalices both simple and majestic. Of the potential for great opportunity and of failure; of the ecstasy of forbidden and sometimes sordid love and the promise of redemption or at least the gentle salve of forgetting. These are Maugham’s stories, upon a canvas as vast as the world around us.

I hope you pick up a book by W. Somerset Maugham, to find as I often do a new perspective or a refreshing moment. You will find yourself better for it.