A review by gsheffy
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. I was expecting another Razor's Edge and was instead met with...this. Or perhaps I'm misremembering how good Razor's Edge actually was. I enjoyed the frankness with which Maugham depicted the existentialism of your twenties and upon losing religion (and the worship of art...) but the genuinely good insights and passages seemed few and far between in this dense brick of a text. I found it hard to empathize with Phillip, especially when it came to women. I actually groaned aloud when he kissed Sally. You know, the teenager. And couldn't stop talking about how "fertile" and "homely" and "domestic" she was. And that he also didn't love her. It was ridiculous--the way he talked about women was ridiculous. I don't even know what to make of the whole Mildred situation. Feels like some sort of Freudian Madonna-Whore Complex. He wanted to be mothered by his wife. 

I was most disappointed upon reaching the end of the novel only for all the contemplation, struggle, and trial to end in, "the straight and narrow domestic middle-class life is actually the answer." That seems extremely diminutive. I enjoyed sections of this book and found I could readily relate to some of its existentialism, but it was nowhere near the novel I expected.