Book Review | Book Chatter

Of Human Bondage
By W. Somerset Maugham
Vintage, 9780593687680, August 2024, 688pp.

The Short of It:

Happiness is an elusive thing.

The Rest of It:

If you’ve been following along then you know that I chose Of Human Bondage for an October read-along. It’s a book that has long been on my radar but it never seemed like the right time to read it. While I was in the hospital after brain surgery, I began to think about all the books that I haven’t gotten to, so once I was well enough, I promised myself to get to it. Boy, am I glad I did.

Philip is orphaned at a fairly young age. He is sent to live with his Uncle and Aunt, the Uncle is a Vicar so religion plays a huge role in the first half of the book. There, for only a short while really, he comes off as difficult and can be mean-spirited to his Aunt who truly seems to only want the best for him. So off Philip goes to a prep school.

There, he meets an interesting cast of characters, both classmates and professors but he is relentlessly bullied for the club foot he was born with. Not able to play sports, not able to wear regular shoes, as soon as anyone becomes cross with him the insults fly out of their mouths, always targeting his foot. This often leaves Philip isolated and alone.

The book chronicles Philip’s poor choices. He has many grand ideas but they often come to him on a whim and are poorly executed. Money, poverty really becomes a struggle as does his desire to be important and to be happy but what does that even mean?

Philip wants to go into religion, then business, then art and the bits of him in Paris are quite good. He does all of this to avoid the inevitable, him going to med school, like his father did. Surprisingly, he ends up seeing value in medicine and perhaps learns a thing or two while pursuing that.

The story sounds rather basic but it’s made much more complicated by certain characters. Mildred for one. She is a horrible, shrew of a person and Philip’s obsession. No matter what she does, and she does plenty, he cannot for the life of him figure out a way to live without her.

She is a villain if there ever was one. In the first movie version of this book she was played by Bette Davis. Accurate casting if I do say so.

The book feels very “Dickensian” and Philip reminded me a lot of Holden from Catcher in the Rye. As long as this book is, nearly 700 pages, I never once felt it a chore to read. I enjoyed picking it up. I had to know how Philip ended up. Did he ever obtain that elusive happiness? Read it and find out! It will be on my faves list at the end of the year. I usually don’t place classics on that list but I did enjoy it quite a bit. Such a character study.

Here are the weekly read-along recaps:

Of Human Bondage – Week 1
Of Human Bondage – Week 2
Of Human Bondage – Week 3
Of Human Bondage – Week 4
Of Human Bondage – Week 5

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Here One Moment
By Liane Moriarty
Crown, 9780593798607, September 2024, 512pp.

The Short of It:

If someone told you the age you die along with the cause of death, would you want to know?

The Rest of It:

Their flight is delayed and the plane is packed with anxious. impatient people. Delay, after delay. All of them needing to be somewhere by a certain time. What is the hold up?

They bide their time talking to the people around them and certainly observing and noticing how everyone else is dealing with this delay. I mean, people watching can be quite entertaining. Especially when you have absolutely nowhere to go and you have people packed like sardines all around you.

Cue the baby crying. What a mess!

In the midst of all of this, a woman slowly rises and walks down the aisle stopping at each row to provide each passenger with the following information: their cause of death, age of death. The passengers don’t immediately get what she is doing but after talking amongst themselves they suddenly realize that she is predicting their deaths.

Some of the passengers are disturbed by it. Especially when she tells a young boy’s mother that her son will die from drowning at seven years of age. Others find it amusing, oh, I am going to pass from old age at the ripe age of 90? Great! Another, a workplace accident? As this strange woman makes her way down the aisle, everyone on board begins to get very anxious. Even the flight attendant is told that she will die from self harm. Self harm? Her?

The opening of the book is pretty intense as we spend hours with these folks on their delayed flight. I really enjoyed the lead-up. Once they arrive at their destination, all of these people return back to their daily lives, but with the knowledge of those predictions. They can’t help but be different.

The woman with the young son immediately signs him up for three different swimming lessons a week. He can’t drown if he is an excellent swimmer. Another explores her mental health and whether or not she is truly depressed, self harm? Seems unlikely. As you can imagine, all of these folks, even if the initially blew these prediction off, can’t help but think of what the lady said so those thoughts bleed into how they live their lives.

Then, there’s the woman herself. We learn that her name is Cherry. We learn that her mother was a famous psychic. We learn of her background, her marriages and the like. This part is very interesting because it’s not immediately clear why she chose to deliver this info to anyone.

Once these people left the plane, I lost interest in the story because there are many characters and they all kind of spiraled out. Through alternating chapters you learn about them, and the woman. But then as things begin to happen, I was riveted again. I really wasn’t sure how the story would end. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

Audio note, I read this in print but also listened to it on audio here and there. It’s fun to listen to. Made my morning commute quite pleasant.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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