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THE HERO....JAMES...WILL HE FREE HIMSELF BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE FROM THE OBLIGATIONS OF AN OPPRESSIVE MARRIAGE....or will his conscience not allow him to disappoint Mary and his parents?
One doesn't know until the last sentence of the book proper (there is a brief epilogue as well) how things will end. A LOVE STORY TRAGEDY!

Somerset Maugham tells the story of Captain James Parsons, who co... More

THE HERO....JAMES...WILL HE FREE HIMSELF BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE FROM THE OBLIGATIONS OF AN OPPRESSIVE MARRIAGE....or will his conscience not allow him to disappoint Mary and his parents?
One doesn't know until the last sentence of the book proper (there is a brief epilogue as well) how things will end. A LOVE STORY TRAGEDY!

Somerset Maugham tells the story of Captain James Parsons, who comes home to Little Primpton a wounded hero. He's been away for five years, first at Sandhurst and then in India and South Africa. During that time he has not seen his parents--his "people," as Maugham consistently refers to them--nor his fianc�, Mary Clibborn, to whom he was engaged shortly before he left home. Upon his return he finds, unhappily, that everything has changed. Or rather, he has: his experiences have broadened his mind, and he now finds the dogmatism and puritanical attitudes of his parents and their circle unbearably oppressive. His parents adore him and yet their love is conditional upon his adherence to the rigid code by which their lives are circumscribed.
Mary is no better. Ostensibly an angel of mercy, whose good deeds toward the ill of Little Primpton are outdone only by the kindnesses she heaps on James and his parents, she is in fact an odious creature, small-minded and convinced of her own rightness and out to change James into the sort of husband she should like. It doesn't help that during his time away James experienced real passion, falling helplessly in love with the wife of a friend, a woman who made a habit of collecting and toying with admirers. His burning infatuation for this woman made James realize that his relationship with Mary, which he'd taken as love, had never been anything more than a comfortable friendship.

Maugham fashions this private drama a surprisingly suspenseful story!!

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