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Rough and the Smooth
One of Maugham's early novels which was made into a film. The story of a man's affair with a charming girl of a different class. The hero, a rising barrister and journalist, becomes more and more hopelessly involved, emotionally and financially, to the despair of his conventional family and friends. Two worlds totally different in feeling and behaviour, meet in this relationship...
190 pages, Hardcover
Published August 19, 1974
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November 5, 2024
Synopsis (from the jacket of the book as there is none on Goodreads):
(This is a tale of an) '...ambitious young lawyer with a society background, the girl he daren't introduce to his friends, the aging businessman babbling in shady deals...these three strangers from separate worlds become deviously involved in a highly-charged emotional relationship, living out their story in a twilight of half-lives, half truths...'
So far, so good, so potentially interesting - and Robin Maugham writes well and this novel received some ecstatic reviews, from John Betjeman amongst others, when in was first published in 1951 yet it is almost impossible to recommend it to anyone to read today, unless for sociological background on the survival in British 'upper middle class society' of Edwardian habits of behaviour and attitudes. This is a novel as well written as any of Somerset Maugham's (Robin Maugham's uncle and very much his literary influence) but with a far greater openness with regards to sexual morality and behaviour. At the time it made RM appear very modern and up-to-date but reading him now he appears hopelessly trapped in a ridiculously out-of-date setting and convention's - it is like looking at black and white photos of students at universities with neat hair cuts, clean shaven, in suits, tweed jackets, ties and even hats. Yet a few years later students the pictures show long hair, beards, jeans, open necked shirts, etc.
The extraordinary thing is that Somerset Maugham's pre-WWII writings, particularly his short stories, can still be read and enjoyed even though the world he writes about has vanished, just like the Austen, Thackeray or Dickens. They wrote about the world around them that was vibrant and alive. Poor old RM was writing about the scrag end of a society that was dead but hadn't yet been buried. The world he wrote about in this novel was dead and vanishing, it was utterly irrelevant to the way the UK was changing - and he doesn't write about it that way because he doesn't see it.
Which is being very hard on poor old RM - because he does say some good things - but it is impossible to see this as anything but a curiosity. I give it three stars because it is well written but if it didn't have the Maugham name on it I probably wouldn't even have read it.
(This is a tale of an) '...ambitious young lawyer with a society background, the girl he daren't introduce to his friends, the aging businessman babbling in shady deals...these three strangers from separate worlds become deviously involved in a highly-charged emotional relationship, living out their story in a twilight of half-lives, half truths...'
So far, so good, so potentially interesting - and Robin Maugham writes well and this novel received some ecstatic reviews, from John Betjeman amongst others, when in was first published in 1951 yet it is almost impossible to recommend it to anyone to read today, unless for sociological background on the survival in British 'upper middle class society' of Edwardian habits of behaviour and attitudes. This is a novel as well written as any of Somerset Maugham's (Robin Maugham's uncle and very much his literary influence) but with a far greater openness with regards to sexual morality and behaviour. At the time it made RM appear very modern and up-to-date but reading him now he appears hopelessly trapped in a ridiculously out-of-date setting and convention's - it is like looking at black and white photos of students at universities with neat hair cuts, clean shaven, in suits, tweed jackets, ties and even hats. Yet a few years later students the pictures show long hair, beards, jeans, open necked shirts, etc.
The extraordinary thing is that Somerset Maugham's pre-WWII writings, particularly his short stories, can still be read and enjoyed even though the world he writes about has vanished, just like the Austen, Thackeray or Dickens. They wrote about the world around them that was vibrant and alive. Poor old RM was writing about the scrag end of a society that was dead but hadn't yet been buried. The world he wrote about in this novel was dead and vanishing, it was utterly irrelevant to the way the UK was changing - and he doesn't write about it that way because he doesn't see it.
Which is being very hard on poor old RM - because he does say some good things - but it is impossible to see this as anything but a curiosity. I give it three stars because it is well written but if it didn't have the Maugham name on it I probably wouldn't even have read it.
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