Rating: 
Summary: Are you a doer of dreams, or of clipped wings?
Review: First let me say to the new reader of this great Somerset Maughm story, be patient in reading this work. It takes a while to get going. This book has always been a favorite of mine. I even have my students read it as part of their HS english curriculum. If you have an ounce of the seeker in your soul, this book will appeal to you. Larry Darrell's world-wide trek helped allow me to become content with my modest life in my early 20s. Very few books can change lives. This book is one of them. I never saw the original movie, and wasn't real happy with the 2nd version. I liked Bill Murray though as Larry. This book gets my highest possible recommendation. Buy it, read it, become your own Larry Darrell. The world needs you!
Rating: 
Summary: Real life guru is inspiration behind book
Review: Though very few people know this, the fictional story is based on the real life story of an American Guy Hauge, an aeronautical engineer, in the ashram of the Indian guru Ramana Maharishi (d 1954). Maugham visited Ramana's Ashram in South India once for a few hours and had a fainting fit there that seemed to be cured by the holy guru gazing at him till he awoke.......
Yes, truth is stranger than fiction!
Rating:
Summary: The Razor's Edge reminds readers they are spirit.
Review: I have read The Razor's Edge five times. It is my favorite book. I absorbed this story like a sponge soaks up liquid and was swept back to my true self- my spirit. Maugham's main character, Larry Darrell, is an example for every human to learn from. The lesson is to find your true self from within and then use what you have learned to help others who wish to help themselves. The original movie of 1947 with Tyronne Power, Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb and John Payne is an excellent portrayal of the book.
Rating:
Summary: The "Real" Conversations With God
Review: Published in 1944, The Razor's Edge is prophetically relevant today. Maugham, a master of insight into human nature, draws characters that, in a deep way, pull at this reader's heartstrings. Why bother with the metaphysical pedagogue garbage on bookshelves today? As an art, literature's aim is to explore questions that human beings have, and, in a well done work, provide a hint of an illuminated path. The path that this novel takes is pure gold. I am only ashamed that it sat on my bookshelf for so long unread.
P.S. If anyone reading this review has taken a taxi ride with Larry, email me!
Rating:
Summary: Maugham's finest.
Review: Set between the two world wars, The Razor's Edge is a shrewd novel of idealism. Supported by several finely drawn sub-plots is a circuitous study of a mans efforts to realize in himself the divine nature latent in each of us. This ambitious book is an enjoyable and edifying success.
Rating: 
Summary: Workmanlike--in a bad way
Review: Never mind the transparency of this novel's
characterizations, has anyone else noticed that
Maugham couldn't write an original metaphor
to spare his life? The man lacked all powers
of poetic description. While as narrator he lavishes praise on the character of Larry Darrell,
he can no more describe Larry's voice than
to say it was "rich" and had a "warmth." Larry's
ever-present smile is described--repeatedly--as "sweet." How pedestrian!
Rating:
Summary: The Best of a Great Author
Review: Who but Maugham could give us all we need to know about the meaning of life and package it in a story so beautifully written that it lulls the reader into a mid-war Europe, but so piquant that its message becomes more valid as the decades roll by
Rating:
Summary: This book may change the way you think about your life.
Review: I think I may have made a tactical error the other day when I told my boss that my career goal was to win the lottery. But last week I read The Razor's Edge and ever since I've been wondering what made me think that work was so important.
Here's the story: Larry Darrell is a changed man when he returns to Chicago after serving in World War I. During the war he witnesses the death of a good friend and comes to the inescapable conclusion that life is too precious to waste. Armed with this insight, he alarms his friends, family and fiancee when he turns down the plum job and heads to Europe to begin the great adventure of his life. From the coal mines of southern France to a lama's monastery on a mountain top in Tibet, Larry Darrell steadfastly resists the pressure to succumb to the societal norms of money and career and instead pursues the meaning of life with a single-minded intensity and a touch of grace.
So how are you going to live your life? Have you had that gnawing feeling lately, as you are working through your 20's and 30's, that you may have unwittingly entered into a Faustian bargain? Have you ever considered trading in the ordinary for the extraordinary? These are questions that we all face and ones that are explored with great insight and skill by W. Somerset Maugham in The Razor's Edge. And with great humor too--not for nothing was it made into a surprisingly good movie starring Bill Murray as Larry Darrell. So forget about the 12-step programs, the books that tell you how to get along with people you'd rather not get along with and send your inner child to bed. Check out The Razor's Edge. Just don't tell your boss what you've been up to. Oh what the heck, tell the boss. It would make Larry Darrell smile and who knows, it might make you happy too
Rating:
Summary: Butterfly Net of Words
Review: In this brilliantly understated masterpiece W. Somerset Maugham slips the timeless theme of mysticism into the time-bound narrative of a novel. It is a class act with all the charm of a daguerrotype. The protagonist is a war hero who gradually withdraws from the world of ego and money inhabited by the social-climbing narrator, who is himself divided between high society and inner happiness. Of course, they are mirrors of each other: Boddhisatva. The excellent old movie based on the book catches the action but misses the nirvana behind the samsara that Maugham captures for us in his butterfly net of words. This has been a high-falutin' Zen review.
Rating:
Summary: The most influential book I've ever read
Review: THE RAZOR'S EDGE originally had the sub-title "The Story of a Man Who Found a Faith," and I think anyone willing to take the time to read this masterpiece will do the same. Larry Darrell embarks on a philosophical journey, but Maugham does not turn his novel into an INTO TO PHILOSOPHY text (like SOPHIE'S WORLD). Instead, Maugham portrays the goodness of one man as juxtaposed by the worldliness of the others. It is fascinating reading by an eloquent, stylish writer. If you are a relatively new reader, THE RAZOR'S EDGE will change your life. If you are an avid reader who is acquanted with Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, O'Neill, etc, Maugham will certainly fit in neatly with your library.
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