"...and the mystery of the sunset, the deep silence of the water, the lithe grace of the coconut trees, added to her beauty, giving it a profundity, a magic which stirred the heart to unknown emotions."--page 114
"His manner was not agreeable. It was sycophantic, and yet behind the cringing air of an old man who had been worsted in his struggle with fate was a shadow of old truculence."--page 115
W. Somerset Maugham, storyteller par excellence, is a master of the character flaw; crafting hauntingly beautiful and subtle portraits of distressingly, often fatally, flawed characters, all the while holding a mirror up to a horribly, rip-your-heart-out flawed humanity. The collection of short stories in `Rain and Other South Sea Stories,' teeming with characters you'll both love and hate almost simultaneously, lushly and entertainingly reaffirms Maugham's superior storytelling talent.
Recommendation: Like O'Henry, Damon Runyon, and Mark Twain; W. Somerset Maugham is one of my favorite go-to guys whenever I want to read something just for the pure pleasure of the reading. If you like a touch of profundity and magic with your beauty, he's the writer for you. As C. K. Chesterton aptly puts it, "Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." For me, reading W. Somerset Maugham, from time to time, is a necessary luxury.
[A word about Dover Publications, Thrift Editions: Unless you have incredibly good, un-hobbled eyesight avoid at all cost. It seems that all the `Thrift' comes from substantially reducing the number of pages in a volume by printing it in the teeniest-tiniest type ever invented. For anyone whose eyesight has been spoiled by the luxury of 12-pt or better type, and especially by those of us who have been pampered with the larger type sizes available with an electronic reader, the type of a Dover Thrift Edition is very uncomfortable to read.]
Dover Publications Thrift Editions, Copyright 2005; 159 pages.