There is something bracing about the sincerity of Maugham's] style . . . a style that serves his general purpose of stripping life to the bone with a thin, sharp knife that lays open to view the normal flesh and the healthy flow of blood as well as the cancerous sore beneath. Leslie A. Marchand, "The New York Times"
Edward Craddock is a thoroughly good man. He may lack his wife Bertha s education, but he is unfailingly good-humored, handsome, placid, and popular. It is hardly surprising that Bertha adores him. But expending all one s passion, all one s spirit, on a man who is so undemonstrative, so unimaginative, can be very trying, as Bertha soon discovers.
In this penetrating study of an unequal marriage, W. Somerset Maugham explores the nature of love and happiness and finds that the two rarely coincide.
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