The Narrow Corner (Vintage International)

First of all, perhaps Amazon or the publisher will change the lurid and erroneous Product Description of this book: "these three men (Nichols, Blake and Saunders) fall under the spell of the sultry and stunningly beautiful Louise, and their story spirals into a wicked tale of love, murder, jealousy, and suicide."

Never mind the purple prose, in fact just one of the three men, young Fred Blake, wants to bonk Louise. It's amusing for those of us who have actually read the book to imagine old Captain Nichols or Doc Saunders wanting to get a leg over.

I read a deep thinker earlier today (one Scott Eyman, Palm Beach Post) regurgitating the same thing about the spellbound threesome. Makes one lose one's faith in critics it does.

Anyway, I loved this book. Just about anything Maugham writes I enjoy, but I especially like the tales that take place in the East and the Pacific.

Captain Nichols is a wonderful character. Maugham writes he kept him on ice for years (he was briefly introduced in "The Moon and Sixpence) 'til he could put him in a novel.

Blake I found a bit thin. Same with Frith. I liked old Swan a lot. The young Dane (can't remember his name) was good. The girl, Louise, was OK. I certainly got a stiffy reading about her, but found it ah, hard to believe how cool and collected she was for her age.

Maugham has trouble with a lot of readers because his characters aren't all of a piece: Nichols is a disgusting swine, but is brave. Frith is a selfish fool, but is a gentleman. Blake is a spoiled rich kid, but grows interesting and gets your sympathy in the end. In short, they are not caricatures, but human characters.

But the star of the show is Dr. Saunders. I just read it a couple of weeks ago and I remember it reads (in the third person, btw) like Maugham talking in the first person about himself. Saunders' detached, amused and tolerant outlook on life seems identical to the author's. You can imagine Saunders writing a Maugham story.

I loathe the usual undergraduate approach to lit crit, but Saunders' having been struck from the medical register (or whatever it is when docs get booted) and his apparent opium addiction might be compared to Maugham's shameful stammer. Certainly Saunders' cutie pie Chinese boy is right out of the author's private world. And Maugham was a qualified doctor himself.

Four stars 'cause of the weakness of the Louise character. A gripping story. As always, there is Maugham's wonderful tone. Very funny in parts. Excellent feel for weather and sea and landscape. I enjoyed it a lot. A sultry spiraling wicked tale of love, murder, jealousy and suicide, as Amazon might put it.

July 27/12:

Fairly trivial, but I'm just rereading "On a Chinese Screen" (written a decade earlier, I believe) and noticed in the sketch entitled "The Stranger" there's a cynical, worldly character named Dr. Saunders who's been struck from the register and who likes to piss off missionaries. FWIW.

Well written book about a South Sea adventure seen primarily through the eyes of Dr. Saunders. The book has philosophical passages that are Buddhist in nature and make a lot of sense. It is also a suspenseful mystery. Maugham expertly compels us to care about the fate of all the characters. The writing is fluid, descriptive and it moves at a good pace. Maugham himself has written better books (Razor's Edge etc.) but his writing is still better than anything out there today

I don't have a clue what the title means.
And very little of this book has to do with the sea (contrary to the description here on goodreads.)

Layer upon layer of story. The overall narrator (Dr. Saunders), a disgraced British physician living in China, summoned to an island to treat a wealthy acquaintance. To get home, he gets a ride on small but sea-worthy ship with a disreputable captain (Nichols) and a mysterious young man (Fred Blake), who seems to be fleeing from legal trouble. On the way, they land on a remote island where they meet a would-be poet, his enchanting daughter, and the daughter's Danish fiance. That's when the story really takes off -- about two-thirds of the way through. Saunders partakes of opium every night and prompted by the people he encounters and the events that take place he often insightfully muses about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I'm addicted to Maugham's musings of that kind.

Here are a few samples:
p. 61 Transmigration? Look at the sea: wave follows wave, it is not the same wave, yet one causes another and transmits its form and movement. So the beings travelling through the world are not the same today and tomorrow, nor in one life the same as in another; and yet it is the urge and the form of the previous lives that determine the character of those that follow.
p. 90 There was something absurd in the notion that this pearl diver, the heir of innumerable generations, the result of a complicated process of evolution that had lasted since the planet was formed, here and now, because of a succession of accidents that confounded the imagination, should be brought to death on this lost and uninhabited spot.
p. 111 He knew once more that he had but to stretch his intelligence ever so little to solve a great mystery; and again he did not do it because it gave him more pleasure to know that it was there waiting to be solved.
p. 120 He ws amused by the lad's ingenuous surprise at the complexity of human nature.
p. 155 the value of life lay not in its moments of excitement but in its placid intervals when, untroubled, the human spirit in tranquility undisturbed by the recollection of emotion could survey its being with the same detachment as the Buddha contemplated his navel.
p. 158 Critics divide writer into those who have something to say and do not know how to say it, and those who know how to say it and have nothing to say.
p. 175 does the outer man represent the man within?... The goal is perfect knowledge of the soul's nature...
p/ 181 My life has been a journey in search of truth and there can be no compromise with truth. The Europeans ask what is the use of truth, but for the thinkers of India it is not a means but an end. Truth is the goal of life.
p. 205 It's the self which is part o the universal self; perhaps we've all got it; but what is so wonderful in her is that it's almost sensible, and you feel that if only your eyes were a little more piercing you could see it plain.
p. 291 The contrast between a man's professions and his actions is one of the most diverting spectacles that life offers... What does it all mean? Why are we here? Where are we going? What can we do?

Although published in 1932, Maugham's account of an elderly doctor's encounters while traveling between islands in the south pacific, doesn't feel that dated. Maugham always manages to create realistic, interesting characters in any setting, and this book is no exception. A grizzled, dodgy skipper and a young Australian man ostracized by his family travel with the doctor in a boat on the open seas and are forced to land on a sparsely inhabited island. There they meet a Danish trader, a farmer and his young daughter. What ensues is the stuff of what Maugham is very good at: physical descriptions of the people and the island, reflections on life and the universal mystery of, as written in one of Gaugain's paintings "who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?" An excellent read by a master storyteller that is still relevant in the 21st century.

This book makes for a not very taxing, completely unbelievable, but interesting read. It is told , for the most part, from the viewpoint of one Dr. Saunders who, as he puts it to himself early on, "had long made himself at home in the futility of things." There is also a down and out sea-captain and a mysterious youth from Australia whose plights keep the reader turning the pages throughout the mediocre writing and predictable storyline. Maugham is a very good storyteller, but not a great writer.

In many ways, this story and its narrator are at a diametric opposite to Conrad's truly great novella/short story "Youth." Both are set within distinctly marine environs, the South sea islands, with Britain in its maritime glory, and both are very concerned with youth. But, Conrad's Marlowe glories in the remembrance of it in some of the most powerful language ever set down on paper. Whereas, with Maugham, and his patented washed-up expats, one knows that a rather dreary outcome awaits the reader, but not too dreary, just enough to make one, with Dr. Saunders, sigh and say something more or less the equivalent of, "So goes it."

Maugham takes the title from one of the meditations of Marcus Aurelius: "Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells." The book, in the end, does precious little more than elaborate on the quote a bit.

So goes it.

I'm not usually a novel reader; but, I picked this one up because I'm interested in islands and tropical living. This is a wonderful book. Somerset Maugham really knows how to tell a story. I'm going to pick up another one of his books and, unlike my usual practice of giving away a book after I read it, I'm keeping this one to reread.

Maugham's character developments encompass philosophy and religion, but mainly their mysterious pasts and why these Europeans decided to live abroad forever. I found parallels to my own expatriate life of thirty years in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, such as slowly melting into the local culture, finding only the occasional newspaper from home, and questioning my identity.

British Dr. Saunders, the POV character, has sailed from his mainland China residence to an island between Borneo and New Guinea to remove a cataract for a rich Chinaman. Here, he encounters a grizzly amoral British sea captain escorting a young Australian urban man from island to island. Dr. Saunders is puzzled by this unlikely relationship. He hitches a ride on their small sailboat, which survives a typhoon and reaches Kanda island, where giant European vessels call regularly. Here, the three seafarers meet local expatriates: a Swede of many trades, a Danish businessman, a British scholar and his daughter.

At Kanda, as Dr. Saunders unravels the sea captain's and Australian's backgrounds, a late night romance and subsequent misunderstandings lead to tragedy.

Since the publication of this novel in 1932, city and island names have changed, probably after the Federation of Malaya gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957.

This story is told by an English doctor who is aboard a small fishing boat sailing the Dutch East Indies with a disreputable captain and a handsome Australian passenger. After a memorable storm they put in at Kanda-Meira in the Kanda Sea (actually Banda-Naira in the Banda Sea) where they meet a planter, his father-in-law, his lovely daughter, and a Danish national. There is a quiet air of mystery and suspense, as well as an undercurrent of sexual tension on the island. Maugham fans will like this tale, the title of which is from Marcus Aurelius, ‘Short, therefore is man’s life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.’

This volume is good Maugham, though not his very best. One of his tales of the Pacific, it follows three shady characters as they land on a remote island and love, lust, violence, Buddhist philosophy and a look at man at his best and woman at her worst ensues,

Dr, Saunders, an erstwhile London surgeon, perhaps disbarred, is on vacation from his practice in Chinese Fu-Chou. He sails with the despicable Capt. Nichols and the mysterious Fred Blake, on the run from something bad in Australia. When they get to the secluded island of Kandu they meet the captivating Louise, a mere 18 years old, but wise beyond her years.

No spoilers here, but one of the sub themes of the book is the deleterious effect of women on men. Louise’s contacts with Fred and the Danish Erik, Fred’s with the woman back in Australia, and Nichols’ with his wife leave us wondering why men want anything to do with women whatsoever.

The story is told well, and moves along smartly. Maugham’s descriptions are vivid and his general observations are solid, laying aside the latent misogyny. I’ll never make it to the South Pacific, but going with W. Somerset is the next best thing. He has a real feel for character and situation. The book is slightly old fashioned, but the characters and action are not.

Maugham’s novels deserve to continue to be read, conventional plotting and narration notwithstanding. The story stands the test of time.

Superb -- neglected, forgotten Maugham novel. Here's Willie at his peak. 3 iffy characters arrive at a place in SoE Asia and chaos, plus sex, result. Only Maugham w his insight could reveal what follows. His finale is devastating...a must-read.