Fair warning, this is going to be a long review for this is a book that is close to my heart written by an author whom I deeply admire.

The Right Time

There are some books that walk into your life at an opportune time. I'm talking about the books that send a pleasant shiver down your spine laden with “Man, this is meant to be!” as you flip through its pages cursorily. Or those that upon completion, demand an exclamation from every book-reading fibre of your body to the effect of “There couldn't ha More...

Since I last read a full-length novel, at the end of August 2012*, I've watched c. 450 films - that's a quarter of the total number of films I've seen in my life. I think this has led to a new set of likes and dislikes in the way a story is communicated, which may be as much about written fiction per se as about this book in particular.

Quite my favourite thing was Maugham's authorial voice: wise, certain and given to bold idiosyncratic statements which not all will agree with, and not all of whi More...

my affection for this book may, in part, stem from the fact that it was one of those novels that i read at a period in my life when my tastes in both literature and life outlook were taking shape (that is, while playing hooky from high school) but its appeal has endured far more than the other usual suspects in that category (kerouac's meanderings, pirsig's pretentions, etc.)

apart from its romantic appeal to the Quiet and Solitary Youth demographic (of which i was a card-carrying member) i thin More...

This novel is by far my favorite account of an artist's life in fiction.

The story of Charles Strickland is based on Paul Gauguin's life. To what extent, I don't know. What I do know is that there is something infinitely irresistible about how artistry is portrayed in this novel. I love the idea that a real artist creates art because he cannot not to. That all other aspects of his life - family, money, acclaim, food even - are secondary to his desire to create. Strickland is remarkable in his dri More...

Най-накрая разбрах защо толкова много ми харесва С. У. Моъм. Голям разказвач на ужасно интересни истории, от чиито герои има какво да научиш за изкуството, за живота и най-вече за низостта и величието на човешката душа. Но най-много ни учи на това да живеем, без да се прекланяме сляпо на живота. Няма нужда да го възхваляваме и да се привързваме към него толкова, а просто да го живеем според собственото си верую. Страхотни прозрения, написани толкова лекичко, че чак се чудиш защо сам не си се сет More...

Opening lines:
I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the ordinary.

A magnificent fictional biography of Paul Gauguin.

There are 4 movie versions of this book:

The Moon and Sixpence (1942) with George Sanders, Herbert Marshall, Doris Dudley.



The Moon and Sixpence (TV 1959) with Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, Hume Cronyn.



The Moon and Sixpence (BBC Play of the Month, 1967) with Charles Gray, Ronald More...

There is not anyone more suited to write a novel based on the misanthropic Gauguin, than the brilliant Maugham. Why? Because, Maguham is a brilliant observer of detail, possessed of wit that lays bare the subject, with the precision of Oscar Wilde--verbally, and publicly humiliating an object of his derision, like a deft vivisectionist happily eviscerating his prize. Yet, Maugham is able to make such "cuts of the needed body of work"(decisions) with more tact than Wilde(Wilde's fate being a prim More...

How much I liked the portrayal of passion for art doesn't matter that much, when the actual main character was left pretty much in the dark. That may have been the author's intention, but this kind of approach has never appealed to me. The story is way too fragmented to get an idea of Strickland's character, even though I did enjoy it as a whole. I would also like to say that whatever you may think of his decisions, you can never understand unless you have felt that compulsive desire to create. More...

A DJ acquaintance of mine recommended this book to me saying it better captured than anything else the artist's need to create art at any cost. Maybe there was something to it; said acquaintance has gone on to forge a successful DJ career.

Story is based on the life of painter Gauguin, but Maugham invents a lot of dramatic flourishes to make his artist character a bit more extreme than the real Gauguin was (not to say that Gauguin wasn't plenty extreme).

I always get suspicious when writers base t More...

It would be a mistake to read this novel as an inspiring tale of the triumph of the spirit. Strickland is an appalling human being--but the world itself, Maugham seems to say, is a cruel, forbidding place. The author toys with theidea that men like Charles Strickland may somehow be closer to the mad pulse of life, and cannot therefore be dismissed as mere egotists. The moralists among us, the book suggests, are simply shrinking violets if not outright hypocrites. It is not a very cheery concepti More...

I thought this one should have ended about 100 pages before it did. I didn't feel the last portion of the book matched with the first portion. I love the way Somerset Maugham writes in the first person. There is something very intimate about his writing, and I'm not sure anyone can rival his descriptive ability. While I enjoyed it, it wasn't my favorite of his. Strickland is the most interesting character, and while I was fascinated by reading him, I couldn't quite buy how he turned out, so I re More...

“DESPERATELY SEEKING BEAUTY”


Maugham’s fictionalized biography of French Impressionist Paul Gaughin presents a stark attempt to recreate the bizarre life of
this amoral painter. Despite the action-less first two chapters which seem to lead nowhere, this riveting novel dares portray the artist- protagonist as an Englishman; the passive narrator attempts to reconstruct the history of a genius who remained unrecognized in his long-suffering lifetime. Shocked by the callous way this “unmitigated ca More...

Charles Strickland, entering middle age, deserts his family and leaves his conventional upper-middle class life in Edwardian London to indulge a hitherto unsuspected passion for painting in Paris and later the French Pacific and become posthumously famous.

Like many of Maugham's stories, this one is told by a worldly-wise narrator who comes in contact with (or receives news on) the central character intermittently over an extended period of time.

Strickland, around whom the book revolves, is not More...

Это таакаааая книга!!! Я не могла успокоится и заниматься чем-либо, пока не закончила читать историю жизни Чарльза Стрикленда. В полном восторге! Буквально с первых страниц меня затянуло. И я проглотила ее за день.

Читая Моэма, поняла как я соскучилась по хорошим книгам. Такой богатый язык! Так здорово переданы характеры героев. Каждая страница - сплошные афоризмы!

О любви женщины к мужчине: "Если женщина любит вас, она не угомонится, пока не завладеет вашей душой. Она слаба и потому неистово жаж More...

Very impressive book. Loosely based on the life of Paul Gauguin, it is an examination of the compulsion to create art, regardless of the personal cost. The main character, Charles Strickland, is exceedingly dislikeable - he verges on the sociopathic - but is also admirable in some ways. The narrator too has his moral weakness - in particular, his fascination with Strickland and inability to wholly condemn his more egomanical excesses - so there are no moral centres in the book. The characters ca More...

Some two years prior, I happened to be in a train in Bulgaria, rolling towards Sofia after having spent a day at the famous Rila monastery. That day, I was traveling together with a middle aged American guy and two young Dutchees on their Interrail through Eastern Europe. We had some challenges coming back, nearly missing the last bus and being almost too late for the last train to carry us to beautiful Sofia.

On our trip back to Sofia, we were accompanied by a small group of Bulgarians who also More...

My feelings about this book are complicated, but then the book itself is complicated. Loosely based on the popular (though largely erroneous)story of the artist Gauguin, this life and its subject's ending are no mystery. But the author knows both how to inhabit his characters and move the story along; it never becomes predictable.

On the other hand, though Maugham is of course a product of his time and place, the sexism and racism created an uneasiness in me. While occasionally amusing from the p More...

"To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults." In other words, it's OK to be a dick when you're a genius. "The Moon and Sixpence" is based loosely on the life of French painter Paul Gauguin. Literature is my art of choice, so I don't know a whole lot about Gauguin, but if he was anything like Somerset Maugham's version, Charles Strickland, then he was a dick. Strickland, a staid, stodgy British s More...

Someone would have had to physically pry this book out of my fierce little clutches last night to get me to even eat dinner. Finished it in five hours flat without intending anything of the sort. I couldn’t put it down. I know I say this a lot but Maugham, goddamn.

“But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.”

And this:

I remember saying to him: “Look here, if everyone acted like you, the world couldn’t

More...

William Somerset Maugham is remembered by most as a superannuated curmudgeon, famously described by the critic Edmund Wilson as a man of “peevish and insistent grumbling”. He was nevertheless loved by those in his immediate circles and greatly admired by a cortege of prominent literati. His reputation and prodigious body of work catapulted him to the echelons of English literature thereby making him one of the most important, if undervalued, writers of his generation. Cuttingly self-critical, pr More...

I read this right after I read the Painted Veil. I guess I am on a Somerset Maugham kick. His characters are richly developed and yet hard to know. I imagine that he may find them and humanity that way, though he does his best in bringing you along on his journey of discovery. I am never quite sure what he thinks about women. Sometimes, such as in the Painted Veil, he finds them redeemable and then in other instances trifling and slow-witted.
The Moon and Sixpence was the story based upon the pa More...

I admire Maugham’s writing - & I loved The Razor’s Edge. But I didn’t enjoy this book. The extreme misogyny of most of the characters really bothered me - & don’t tell me it’s an accurate depiction of social mores of the time – else I shall have to throw some other books from 1919 at you!

In this book, Charles Strickland leaves his wife & children after 17 years of a conventional life & passionately pursues his art through starvation & being an utter prick in Paris; then goes More...

Maugham's novel is supposedly based on the life of Paul Gauguin, but that's misleading as it is no way a fictionalized biography. He uses a few details of Gauguin's life such as his abandonment of his family and his conventional career as a stockbroker, and then his retreat to Tahiti, but beyond that, Maugham creates his own story of what drives such an artist.
It's an obsessional pursuit of the creation of beauty, so single-minded that it can drive everything else out of the artist's life. Mau More...

'The Moon and the Sixpence' is the story of Charles Strickland, a stockbroker, who suddenly leaves his wife and kids to go first to Paris and then Tahiti to pursue a career as a painter. This story was inspired to Maugham by Paul Gauguin's life.

This novel brought me immediately back to the world of Maugham. Same writing style and the narrator, although name and profession changed, the voice, Maugham's one, remains the same.

Strickland is depicted as a very strong character who doesn't care about More...

Reading this book, my first time reading Maugham, I do understand why he is no longer widely read compared to other English writers of the early 20th century. The narrative is highly character-driven, with minimal action, and most of the characters are, frankly, detestable. However, I found this novel interesting if read as a study in the genders at their very worst. The dialogue and actions of the female characters reveals an acute misogyny; however, even as a feminist, I was struck by how accu More...

What it takes to be a real artist is debatable. A sudden urge to create, an invincible desire to stay away from anything that’s mundane (that includes your current job) and keeps you away from your true calling – I can take that. But leaving everything behind, i.e. spouse and children, and completely ignore them for the rest of your life in order to focus on your art, whatever form it has, – that is too much for me to bear. I definitely speak as a woman and wife, whose connection to art limits t More...

I haven't yet come across a book that describes a man's propinquity to an animal more affectionately. The author and the reader partake in in an endeavor to decipher the ways of a one such single-minded and self centered genius, who uses other men and women as means to achieve the peak of his talent and his creativity.

Based loosely on the life of Paul Gauguin, Maugham is able to portray well the mind of this capricious genius whose sole aim in life is to paint. The narrative is gripping and the More...

What’s happened to Somerset Maugham’s reputation? In his lifetime he was a massively popular, bestselling author, and what’s more a critical darling. But now, nearly fifty years after his death, his books remain in print but he’s hardly a writer in fashion. Why is that? As although I’m fairly new to his fiction (this is only my second Maugham), I have to say that I’m deeply impressed by his work. These are sharp and observant novels with strong characters and excellent narrative. And yet their a More...

A loosely factual account of Paul Gauguin's life. Gauguin was a nutter, and Maugham does a wonderful job of depicting the artist's transition from predictable, married-with-children banker to mad, reclusive artist working in the tropics.

To enjoy this book is to appreciate Maugham's unique, first-person style through which he sketches observations made through direct encounters with his subjects or those who knew them. In both this novel and The Razor's Edge (and probably others), he maintains a More...

Once again Maugham blurs the line between fiction and auto-adventure. He is narrator, young writer, observing the life of artistes and privileged literati in turn of the century Europe. This is the story of Strickland, a middle-aged, middle-class banker who abruptly walks away from his staid London life to become a painter in Paris. It is the thinly-veiled biography of Gauguin, complete with his escape from penury in France to the lush tropical forests of Tahiti. The painter is despicable, heart More...