Peony by Pearl S. Buck: Not so Much About Flowers

Already a contender for Prettiest Book Cover of the Year

I'm still really trying to read as many books as possible this year from my own shelves. I made a pile of books that I could count towards the Back to the Classics Challenge, and one of them was Peony by Pearl S. Buck that I received as a Christmas gift several years ago. I really liked The Good Earth; also, I'm really enamored of all the beautiful covers of Buck's novels that were published a few years ago by Moyer-Bell. I think they're out of print now but most of them are still reasonably priced. 

Published in 1948, Peony is set approximately 100 years earlier. It's the story of a young bondwoman who was adopted/indentured from an orphanage to a Jewish merchant family living in Kaifeng. At the beginning of the story, Peony is about 17 and is in love with the only child of the household, the handsome David who has been unofficially betrothed since infancy to Leah, daughter of the rabbi.

David's mother is pushing the match but David's father Ezra, who is half-Chinese (by his late father's concubine) is less concerned. David thinks he is in love with Kuelan, whom he's never actually met but is the daughter of successful Chinese merchant. Ezra realizes this would be a strategic business move. Meanwhile, Peony has to hide her love for David, realizing he can never marry her, but she begins to manipulate the situation so that she can guarantee a place in the house as long as possible.

David is torn between pleasing his other and marrying Leah, whom he likes but doesn't love, and following his own heart and marrying Kuelan. He's also torn between his Jewish faith and continuing the family heritage, or assimilating further into the Chinese culture that has welcomed his family. There is mention of atrocities done to Jews in other lands, particularly Palestine, and there may also have been pogroms at that time period to which they are referring. Meanwhile, Peony doesn't have many choices as a bondwoman -- I'm really not sure if she ever had the ability to leave the house or if she was actual chattel. 

The best parts of Peony are the descriptions of life in China. Pearl Buck really knew her subject, but I don't think lyrical writing is really her strong point, compared to Graham Greene which was my previous read. The dialogue in particular is pretty stiff. And the character development in this book is really not great. In particular, Leah has very little character development except for being Beautiful and Good, plus some other throwaway characters and mustache-twirling villains with little or no explanation. 

However, the book has a really interesting premise -- I knew there were ethnic Muslims in China, but I didn't know about the history of the Jews. It was actually really refreshing to read about Jews who weren't being persecuted and were accepted. Overall, I think it was either too short or overly ambitious. There were a lot of unresolved storylines and characters that weren't especially developed, and the ending seemed pretty rushed -- Buck basically wrapped up years of family history (and the Jewish population of Kaifeng) in just one or two chapters at the end. I almost feel like either it should have been longer, or she should have narrowed the focus. 

The original 1948 cover. The asymmetrical hair is making my eyes twitch, but that's how it's described in the book.

Buck did base the story of the Kaifeng Jews on historical research, and my edition did have some really interesting end notes with the history. I also own East Wind, West Wind in a Moyer-Bell edition, plus a couple of her other novels in mid-century editions -- you can find them pretty cheaply at used bookstores and library sales.  I think I have Imperial Woman, The Living Reed and The Three Daughters of Madame Liang. Hopefully I'll get to one of them in May for Asian-Pacific Heritage month.

I'm counting this as my Classic with a Single-Word Title for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

The Woman Warrior is the seventh book I read from my 2015 TBR Pile Challenge. I chose it in honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage month, and though I finished this book almost two weeks ago, I'm having a really hard time writing about it. 

Published in 1975, The Woman Warrior is Maxine Hong Kingston's memoir is the story of growing up as a child of Chinese immigrants, but it's not just about her -- it's really about the experiences of the women in her family, both in China and after arriving in the United States. It's a fairly short book, just over 200 pages, and is divided into five sections. Each of the sections is centered around a different woman in her family -- herself, her mother, and her aunts. The book is beautifully written, but mostly heartbreaking. The parts that really got to me were how badly women and girls were treated. The first chapter starts with story of an aunt, her father's sister, who got pregnant after her husband had left for America to make his fortune, and her shame was so terrible she threw herself and her newborn child into a well. Kingston doesn't even know her aunt's name -- the shame is so terrible that her name is never mentioned, and she is instructed never to speak of it to her father. 

There's also a chapter about her mother's sister, who came to the United States to confront the husband that had left her and a daughter behind in China years before; a chapter about her mother studying to be a doctor in China after her husband had gone to America; and a retelling of the Fa-Mulan woman warrior myth. Although it's considered a nonfiction memoir, there are definitely elements of fiction woven throughout. Like some of the earlier memoirs I posted about this year, I did wonder a bit how much was fact and how much was fiction. 

Not the edition I read, but I really like this cover from 1977.

Overall, I liked it, but it was a difficult read at times -- it becomes really painful sometimes to read how badly women are treated in many cultures. It's also tough to read about how difficult it is for the children of immigrants who are caught between two different cultures. 

Peking Picnic by Ann Bridge

I chose Peking Picnic by Ann Bridge as one of my TBR Pile Challenge books this year because I'd bought a Capuchin Classics edition (pictured below) for next to nothing when Borders closed up a few years ago.  Some of the members of my online book group had raved about Illyrian Spring, one of Bridge's later works, which I read and enjoyed very much. I was really looking forward to this one.  However, this turned out to be another one of those books in which not much happens.

Ostensibly, it's a story set around 1930, about a bunch of European diplomats and hangers-on who take a weekend excursion from Peking (now known as Beijing) to a temple several miles away.  Though it's entitled Peking Picnic, it's not at all how I've ever had a picnic --  that is, sitting on a blanket on the ground and eating from a basket, fighting off ants and wasps, then packing it all up and going home the same day.  No, these people bring camp beds (what are these anyway?) and good china, loaded up on a bunch of donkeys by a bunch of servants who then serve them multiple fancy courses.  I suppose it's closer to what we would call camping for rich people also known as glamping.  I myself have never been on a picnic with multiple courses, such as the "broiled crayfish with Hollandaise. . . . grilled chicken a l'Americain (with Russian salad); and . . . macedoine of fruit with cream mousse, followed by coffee and liqueurs."  I suppose it's closer to camping Downton Abbey style, if all the characters were diplomats stationed in China.  

Anyway, there's really not a lot of action or plot in the book.  The main character is Laura Leroy, wife of one of the diplomats stationed in Peking.  One of her friends organizes a weekend excursion, which may or may not be cancelled because of a possible military coup.  Included in the party are her two nieces who are visiting from England, various young diplomats who may be falling in love with said nieces, and various wives and people from the diplomatic corps.  Basically, Mrs. Leroy does a lot of thinking and making sage pronouncements with people who are falling in and out of love.  

For three quarters of the book, hardly anything happens, though the writing is mostly beautiful. Here's a description of a temple the party visits:

The whole temple is full of the light gentle voice of water; the formality of stone and shrine and symbol is made gay with its shining freedom, brought in, like the blossoming tree, to worship within the holy places.  The Chinese do deeply love and honor the things of nature -- air, water, flowers and trees -- more deeply than almost any other people. 

Ann Bridge really captures the sense of place.  I've actually been to Beijing, and though it was about eighty years after the book is set, I can still get a glimpse of what it must have been like back in the 1920s and 1930s.  

Eventually, the party does come into conflict with Chinese bandits who are associated with one of the warlords who might be planning some kind of takeover -- the same warlords who initially put a damper on the excursion, to the chagrin of the hostess.  From this point, there's a lot happening in the story, though it does take more than 200 pages to get there. 

This book does give some insight to the viewpoint of British colonials of the period, who were unbelievably racist, and according to this book, completely obtuse.  If the biggest problem they have is that fighting warlords might interrupt your party plans, there's something a little bit wrong here.  I mostly liked the book, despite the slow pace, though I was really put off by the racism exhibited by the British regarding the Chinese and other Asian races -- there are a couple of condescending cracks about Filipinos as well.  So -- overall, a fairly interesting though slow read, and I've now finished seven of the twelve books on my TBR Pile Challenge, so I'm on track.  

Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck

I'd wanted to read another book by Pearl S. Buck since I read The Good Earth a couple of years ago, but just never got around to it.  After reading an excellent post about her book Peony by Eva at a Striped Armchair, I started looking through the library's catalog to see if there were enough copies of another book besides The Good Earth, which I've discussed with two different groups already.  Luckily, we had about nine copies of Pavilion of Women, plus I was easily able to get another for myself from Paperback Swap.

This story has a really interesting premise:  On her 40th birthday, Madame Wu, the matriarch of a large wealthy Chinese family, has decided that she is going to get a concubine for her husband.  This will have serious repercussions, as it will upset the balance of the entire extended family who live in the house, including her two daughters-in-law and four sons, two of whom are unmarried. Madame Wu needs to get one of those sons paired off quickly, and decides that an English tutor would help him to find an educated bride.  She finds a European monk, Brother Andre, and his presence at their compound begins to affect both the son and Madame Wu herself, in her philosophy about religion, education, marriage, and life in general.

I really enjoyed this book.  It was a fast read, and I found the characters and the family dyanamics very interesting.  It's one of Buck's few books about characters who are not poor, and I found it very interesting to learn how this upper-class Chinese family functioned in the early part of the 20th century, just before the revolution.   There are a lot of books about Asians written by Westerners nowadays, and there are some good ones, but I really feel like Buck had a very authentic viewpoint for much of the book, since she did grow up in China among Chinese people. I did think Madame Wu was a bit too perfect, and the ending was a bit preachy for me, but overall I really liked it.

This book was the May selection for my library's book club, and I have to say it was a big hit.  There was a lot to discuss about the role of women, religion, poverty, and the rumblings of communism in the story. Another big plus at the meeting was the appearance of Amanda from Ramblings, who was finally able to attend!  I've been attending her classics book group for more than three years, so it was really fun to have her come to a group that I was hosting.  She liked the book too, and if you want to read her review of Pavilion of Women, click here.

If you're looking for an interesting book about Chinese culture, and you've already read The Good Earth, I would recommend this book.  I do have several others of her books on my TBR shelves, including some of which I've picked up at library sales for as little as $1.  Has anyone read any other books by Pearl Buck?  Which do you recommend?

The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell

I will not mince words:  this book was a HUGE disappointment.  I was so excited when I finally got this from the library -- I'd been on the hold list forever.  And it was such a huge waste of time, I'm really annoyed.

But I should back up a bit -- is it just me, or are Scandinavian mysteries really hot right now?  I first started reading them a couple of years ago when a well-read library colleague recommended an Icelandic author, Arnaldur Indridason.  Icelandic -- who knew?  Well, turns out there are just a plethora of great mystery authors from Scandanavia, which sort of makes sense, as they have such long, dark, bleak winters.   Not much to do for several months except drink and contemplate horrific crimes, I suppose.   So, anyway, I read several from Indridason, which I loved, and I tried Stieg Larsson, who's very hot now because of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (though he is sadly dead and not writing any more); and then I found Henning Mankell, who was recently featured on a PBS Mystery! miniseries, Wallander starring the wonderful Kenneth Branagh. All very exciting.

But this book, not so much.  The title should have been a giveaway that this book would be different -- it does not feature Mankell's Detective Wallander.  No, this is a stand-alone novel, with a new sleuth who is actually an amatuer, a criminal court judge named Birgitta Roslin.  She finds herself involved in a horrific murder after nineteen bodies are discovered in a tiny remote village in the far north.  Though she's miles away in the big city, she realizes she's connected to the victims -- years ago, two of the victims were her mother's foster parents.  Intrigued and frightened, she begins to dig deeper and naturally finds out all kinds of stuff that the professional police miss, like the connection to the mysterious Man from Beijing, and possibly even his identity.

This book had some real potential, but after a few chapters it really went downhill.  After Birgitta discovers the connection (and shares it with the police, who naturally dismiss it as farfetched), there's a great flashback to the source of the Sweden/China connection, which goes back more than 100 years and is thousands of miles from either country.  But sadly, then for hundreds of pages the action jumps to characters in China (not a spoiler, folks, as it is The Man From Beijing) and there's a huge digression about what's going on with communism vs. capitalism in present-day China which goes on forever, and then the action shifts to Africa of all places, and there's a whole pan-global tirade about colonialism and capitalism and I think the book really lost focus.  It's as if Mankell had this great idea about a killer with an overdeveloped sense of vengeance, and while explaining the back story, he had another great idea for a novel about China and Africa, but decided to smash them both into one book. 

The protagonist Birgitta, who figures out the connection because of several fantastic coincidences, then turns into an idiot.  This woman, who has been a criminal court judge for years, does some really stupid things like telling complete strangers in various countries information about criminals she's investigating, trusting said strangers, not telling the police she's in danger. . . it goes on. Seriously, criminal court judges work with criminals -- you might learn a little something about the criminal mind!  I knew that just from watching Law & Order!  Plus, the horrific crime itself is barely explained -- there's all these loose ends that are never tied up.  I kept reading and hoping for some kind of explanation but all this stuff is just left out, like Mankell ran out of time. 

And now I'm really annoyed that I wasted half a weekend on this book.  I could have been doing something useful.  Like watching Law & Order.

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

I really did want to like this book.  It's about food -- a food writer! Traveling to China!  I thought this book would be exactly the thing I would love. First of all, I actually did have a paying job as a food writer, so I know a little bit about it.  I've also been to culinary school (though, I admit, it was no CIA or Cordon Bleu; it was part of the city colleges in Chicago; nevertheless, I finished it and have a certificate.)  And I did actually get paid to work in several professional kitchens.   Plus, I've been lucky enough to visit China, both Beijing and Hong Kong.  So I was pretty interested in this book, and even suggested it to my library's book discussion group.

Unfortunately, I am pretty ambivalent about it.  Here's the set up: Maggie, a forty-year-old food writer, is grieving over the loss of her husband, who died suddenly in an accident.  She gets the shock of her life when one of her husband's colleagues calls from China, with some upsetting news:  apparently her husband, who visited China frequently for work, had an affair with a Chinese woman, who has now named her late husband in a paternity suit!  She only has a few weeks before the Chinese courts will rule, so she has to move fast to find out if there's any truth to it.

Maggie calls her editor and explains that she will need some time off for this trip.  No problem, says her boss, who then offers her a great assignment:  interview a Chinese-American chef who has moved to Beijing to open a fantastic, Imperial-style Chinese restaurant. The chef, Sam Liang, comes from a long line of chefs -- his grandfather wrote a well-respected book on Chinese cooking, which he is attempting to translate into English.  Maggie agrees.  Turns out the restaurant has hit a snag, but said chef is about to enter a cooking competition, sort of the Olympics of Chinese cuisine.  He agrees to be interviewed about the competition instead.

So, we then have two intertwining stories: Maggie dealing with the knowledge that her beloved husband may have had a secret life, and this child who may or may not be his; and chef Sam, who is struggling with his Chinese family, including his estranged fatherl about his cooking style, his family history, and the competition. Of course, since they are both single, attractive, damaged adults, a romance is also involved -- will they or won't they?

As much as I wanted to love this book, I just couldn't.  First of all, it's short, only 288 pages, and it's also one of those hardbacks that are on the small side, which I think is the publisher's sneaky way of making the book look longer than it is.  Not that there's anything wrong with short books, but somehow this book seemed unfinished to me.  There's a lot going on in this story which could have been really interesting, but there are quite a few threads in this book that sort of went nowhere, or seemed unresolved.  Also, some characters were introduced that seemed unnecessary to the plot, and their presence seemed sort of forced and unnatural to the story.   And after reading the book, I still didn't feel like Maggie's character was that well developed.  I would have liked to learn more about her back story -- and Sam's, too, for that matter.  We know he grew up in America, his mother was Jewish, he hasn't been lucky in love, etc., but not much else.  It seemed to cut right to his time in China as though he suddenly appeared there.

There is a ton of great food writing in this book, which is one of its strong points.  If you have any desire to read about authentic Chinese cuisine, and the history of Chinese cooking, or what happened to all the fantastic chefs during the cultural revolution -- this book is great.  However, there were some aspects about the cooking that I found unrealistic.  This guy, a foreigner, has only been cooking Chinese food for four years and is now ready for this major competition?  The book points out how he slaved at his uncles' restaurants, but it also constantly points out how intricate and complex the food and cooking styles are -- it seems to me that's something that takes decades to learn, not something that you pick up that quickly.  And he only has a week to prepare for this dinner -- he spends an AWFUL lot of time chatting with this writer for someone so busy.    I did actually work in several kitchens during high-volume and high-pressure situations, and I honestly don't see a chef wanting to be interviewed when he's under so much stress.

Also, though Maggie has been a food writer for years, she can't cook.  At all.  Can't even boil water.  This to me was the MOST unbelievable thing about this book.  Now, I'm not saying that all food writers should be gourmets, or have worked in kitchens, or gone to school, but seriously, if you are a food writer, you are writing and thinking about food an awful lot of the time, which indicates that you are really, really, into it.  I find it extremely hard to believe that someone who has making a living as a food writer, who needs to write about chefs, techniques, ingredients, has observed -- as she keeps reminding us how writers are good observers -- and she can't even make a salad or roast a chicken?

Maybe I am just nitpicky.  I do know that Nicole Mones IS a food writer -- she wrote for Gourmet, and you can't get much more prestigious than that -- and lived in China, so she has the background and she knows what she's talking about.  I did love all the food writing,  and the history -- she gives some back story on Sam's father about why he refuses to cook or return to China, which is just fascinating.  Opulent cuisine was not appreciated during the cultural revolution, to put it mildly.  I would have loved an entire book about him and his story.

The descriptions of the food and cooking are just fantastic, and make me want to go back to China -- I'll admit many of the restaurants I visited were probably not as authentic as those in the book.  (Mones thoughtfully provides recipes and restaurant recommendations on her website.)  If you are interested in China, or fascinated by food, you might enjoy this book. I just wish the plot and character development were as delicious as the cuisine in this book.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

I’m reviewing this book together with my good friend Amanda of The Zen Leaf.

Synopsis:  Set in the 1920s in England, Hong Kong, and China, The Painted Veil is the story of  Kitty Fane. Young, beautiful, and shallow, she marries Walter Fane after realizing she was running out of time and needed to catch a husband quickly.  After a short courtship, she accompanies Walter to Hong Kong where he is working as a bacteriologist. She soon becomes bored with Walter, and has an affair with a diplomat. Walter discovers her infidelity and decides to punish her by forcing her to accompany him on a dangerous medical mission to a cholera-stricken village in China. Oddly enough the worst circumstances bring out the best in Kitty.

Amanda: Hi Karen! Thanks for buddy-reviewing with me!

I think I want to start out by talking about William Somerset Maugham. I first read one of his books in January 2001 – Mrs. Craddock – and fell in love with it. I’ve since read 12-15 of his books, several of them more than once. He’s one of my favorite classic authors. His books are easy to read and well thought out. The Painted Veil is one of my favorites of his. This is the third time I’ve read it, and I think I love it just a little bit more with each reread! So how did you discover Maugham?

Karen: I discovered Maugham back when I was a freshman in college. I had a huge crush on a boy in my dorm who had read Maugham the year before in a lit class. He insisted on lending me Of Human Bondage to read during the winter break. Of course, since I was crushing on him, I had to read it, and I loved it. It was one of the first classics I read for pleasure. I didn’t read any more Maugham until I met the man who is now my husband, also a Maugham fan — The Razor’s Edge is one of his favorite books. (Obviously, I’m attracted to men with great taste in literature!) So I read Razor’s Edge, and a couple others, but then I didn’t read hardly any more Maugham for quite awhile. Then, in 2008, our classics reading group chose the books for this year, but The Painted Veil wasn’t scheduled for almost a year! I couldn’t wait that long and read it right away. It’s just as good the second time around.

I agree, Maugham’s works are not difficult reads. I’ve been reading quite a few Victorian authors this year, so he’s really a refreshing change. I remember that I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Of Human Bondage was — it’s quite long, more than 600 pages (depending on the edition), yet it’s pretty fast for such a long book. The Painted Veil is much shorter, only about 250 pages, and I could probably read the whole thing in one day.

Amanda: One of the things I find most fascinating about Maugham was how little respected he was amongst his fellow authors. He was a pulp novelist. Often his writing tended more toward the cliche, and his prose was straightforward. With people like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Woolf as contemporaries, he was looked down on for not being experimental like them. He was old fashioned. But really, it was his straightforward, easy prose that hooked me on classics. Without him, I’m not sure what sort of reader I’d be today, or if I’d be a reader at all.

So. The Painted Veil. I loved it. All three times. One of my favorite things about it is the characterization. Each character is so round. None of them are all good or all evil. I personally find Kitty obnoxious, and really sympathize with her husband, but others might find Walter cruel and callous. Personally, I understood him and while I didn’t think he always made the best of judgments, I really admired his dedication to the people he was taking care of. What did you think of the characters?

Karen: There aren’t that many characters, but I agree, they’re well-rounded, especially Kitty. When I started the book, I really wanted to smack her, but I kept on reading — which just shows what a great writer Maugham was. These are seriously flawed people, yet the story is so fascinating that it holds the reader.

Anyway, I’ve really been thinking about some of these flawed characters lately, I’ll probably write a blog entry about it soon. I always think of them as Fascinating Train Wrecks. However, I’m not sure if I’d put Kitty in this category, because she actually makes changes to try and improve the situation. She’s proactive, and as annoying as she was, I actually ended up respecting her. Not that she’s perfect, she still makes mistakes, but you can see at the end that there’s hope for her.

So, Amanda, what did you think of Walter? Did he deserve Kitty?

Amanda: I think the real question is – did Kitty deserve Walter? Taking them back, prior to the affair and him taking her to the cholera epidemic. Walter is smart, hardworking, and sensitive. He has a very hard time relating to other people, and he has no patience for frivolity and social customs. Kitty, on the other hand, is empty-headed, self-centered, and a bit of a bimbo. Why he ever fell in love with her is beyond me – I suppose we can’t always explain why we fall in love with someone – but I think it’s interesting that he went into the whole marriage with his eyes open. He knew what she was. He knew she was like a doll – beautiful but empty. He was willing to put up with that in order to be near her, and he was always very kind. I don’t think Kitty ever realized – not even at the end – how badly she hurt him. She kept thinking it was pride, that her infidelity didn’t matter, shouldn’t matter, but to him, it killed his love.

I do think she became a better person, to a certain degree, but even at the end, she’s still selfish. I hope she’ll be better, and I do like that she plans to have daughters and raise them to be strong and smart, unlike her. That brings up another point, though – I thought this book said a lot of interesting things about the role of women at the time. It seems to take place in a very transitional time when women were gaining some independence but could not entirely be strong. Did you feel Maugham had a feminist slant in mind when he wrote it?

Karen: I think Kitty’s definitely less selfish at the end than at the beginning. Without spoilers, there are several instances when she tries deliberately not to hurt people. And she’s much better at reading people, and reacting to them.

The feminist angle didn’t strike me at all when I read it, but I can see it as a possibility. There are some strong female characters — even the Mother Superior, and Charlie’s wife Dorothy. They’re in traditional roles, nun and wife, but they’re a lot stronger than Charlie and maybe even Walter. I wish Maugham had developed Walter a little more. I think he was the least developed of the main characters. My favorite male character was definitely Waddington, but he was also tragic in his own way. Do you think in general the male characters were as well developed as the female?

Amanda: I actually thought Walter was very well developed, but that might be because of how much I could understand him. He wasn’t traditionally developed – it was just a brushstroke of information spattered here and there throughout the novel, leading to a whole picture. I think about things and feel things in very much the same way he does, so it was easy for me to relate to him and make a full picture of him in my mind, I suppose. I could see other people relating to him less, though, because he’s the sort of personality that many people have trouble relating to in real life. I think Maugham wrote the social awkwardness well.

I have read, though, that Maugham tended to understand women better than men in his own life, so it’s possible that’s why the women characters felt more developed. I loved the Mother Superior. I don’t normally like reading about Catholics, having grown up Catholic, but the Sisters in that convent were so different from traditional Catholics. Take, for example, one of my favorite quotes from the book:

Beauty is also a gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.

I love this. This goes against most traditional viewpoints of beauty. Most books treat beauty either as a precursor to emptyheadedness, or as a great evil. To hear someone speak this way – especially the head of a Catholic convent – is just amazing. I loved that the Sisters were so open, forgiving, and loving. They were the very picture of charity. Even though normally I don’t like to read much about religion in books, the passages with the Sisters just blew me away and I think they played an integral role in how much Kitty changed. What do you think?

Karen: I completely agree! They’re much more forgiving than Catholics are usually portrayed. It’s no wonder Kitty was really drawn to them. I wish I knew them! And I loved that quote also. I don’t normally make notes when I write, but I think I have to go back with sticky notes and tab all the passages I loved in this book.

One thing that did bother me about this book was the racist way in which the Chinese are portrayed, mostly the way they’re described — ugly, yellow, etc. That’s the one thing that really put me off in this book. But it’s possible that Maugham was merely reflecting the attitude of the British of that time, or Kitty’s attitude. What do you think?

Amanda: I do think that was reflective of Kitty’s attitude. It’s possible there was a certain amount of British superiority to it – I think that’s almost a given in that time period – but the main characters other than Kitty seemed to have compassion for the Chinese. The nuns, Waddington, Walter. They saw past the racial differences and did everything they could to help. The Chinese were just other people to them, not some strange foreign race that repulsed them. Even Kitty tried to get over her prejudice against them once she was surrounded by the children every day. I liked that. I thought it was a good message – that to overcome prejudice, one must spend time with those one is prejudiced against.

Without giving away spoilers, what did you think about the fate of Walter and Kitty’s relationship? Do you think, given the chance, they could have ever come to live together peacefully? Or were they, as Kitty says at one point, “Two little drops in the river that flowed silently towards the unknown; two little drops that to themselves had so much individuality and to the onlooker were but an indistinguishable part of the water?” (That’s my other favorite quote.)

Karen: That’s going to be tough without giving away the ending. I went back and forth as I read the book. Kitty seemed to really be growing and maturing as a person, so I began to feel hopeful, but then I didn’t know if Walter would ever forgive her. It sort of bothered me that Walter was so unforgiving, though he was surrounding by people dying horrible deaths. I would have thought it might have put her transgression in perspective somewhat — but that also relates to him deliberately bringing her into a situation where she might get infected and die, which is so bitter and vengeful. I saw Kitty changing as a person more than Walter, and I began to actually like her better than him.

This book has so many issues that are great for discussion, but it’s really hard without giving away major plot points — and I reaaaallly hate spoilers. I would highly recommend this book for a face-to-face discussion group — not too long, an easy read, a great plot and interesting characters. This was a great choice, and I am so looking forward to reading more by Maugham. There are three more on my to-read bookshelf right now, and I am so tempted to go back and reread Of Human Bondage.

So, I know you’ve read most of the Maugham oeuvre. How does this compare to the others? Is it one of your favorites? Definitely one of mine.

Amanda: Well, I haven’t read his entire works – he was an extremely prolific author. Wikipedia has 54 entries for him under the “Novels, Travel, Criticism, and Assorted Pamphlets” section, plus another 24 plays, 187 periodical contributions, and 123 short stories. I’ve only read a mere glancing of that. I haven’t read a single play or short story, though I hope to fix that next year. Of the novels I’ve read, though, I count The Painted Veil among my favorites, alongside Mrs. Craddock. Some other good ones are The Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage, and Theatre. In fact, there have only been two Maugham novels I disliked (The Magician, and The Moon and the Sixpence). I would definitely recommend his books as easy-to-read classics that are fun but also deep.

Thanks again for doing this review with me, Karen! I was having such a hard time figuring out how to review this book, since I love it so much.

Karen: Thank you, Amanda, for inviting me! It was really fun! We’ll have to do it again soon!