Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [350]
I read the book for the first time as a young woman very slowly, not wanting to leave one scene for another and not knowing what was coming next. When I read it again recently in middle age, I was astounded to find that I was reading it just as slowly, even though this time I did know what lay ahead. It was just that I wanted to feel the empty heart of that vicarage, where a child could not play with toys on the Sabbath, and smell the food in the Paris restaurants, and brace myself for my friend Philip Carey doing the wrong thing yet again from a mixture of motives.
He is one of the most memorable characters in fiction. And he has gone limping through my dreams and the dreams of thousands of readers with his heavy clubfoot, with his hope that life is going to shine happily on him and with his streaks of intolerance, envy, and jealousy that make sure every gentle little hill becomes a mountain. Philip Carey learns little from all he endures. But those of us who take the journey with Philip Carey from his mother’s sickbed to his momentous decision at the very end of the book might learn something for ourselves.
I love books that “improve,” and this one accidentally improved me a lot.
—Maeve Binchy
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