Rating: 
Summary: Follow your way!
Review: The main character is Charles Strickland, a successful stockbroker. He gives up everything to follow his own vocation. He's obsessed by the passion to create beauty. Even though you don't know much about his daily life you get involved in the spirit of art and the way artists live and think. The last part of the book when Strickland's life in Thahiti is narrated by people who got in touch with him there. There you learn most about his character and you understand his feelings better. Somerset Maugham was inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin when he wrote this book. But it's not a boring biography which contains each detail of Paul Gauguin's life, a lot of the events in the book didn't happen in his real life at all. I really enjoyed reading this book and Ican recommend to read it to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: art and life
Review: This novel isn't one to be read just in one day, but it is an enrichment for life. Maugham is one of the best describers of situations, characters and environments. That makes the novel interesting but sometimes hard to read. Even the speciality of the characters doesn't really help the reader to feel with Maugham's main figures. What Maugham is well known for is the fact that he always makes the personalities in his novels experience a crisis in their lives and that has drastic consequences for their customary life style. In particaular that means that the evil and despicable characters are changed into good ones at the end or vice versa. The main topic of this novel is Strickland's obsession with art. Nothing but art really counts in his life. He doesn't care about anyone and anything, not even about his personal life and death. And that's also what Maugham wants to tell us: follow your path and don't let yourself be irritated by anything and anybody. If you have a bit of time to spare I can only recommend this novel.
Rating:
Summary: a mixture between Gauguin¿s and Maugham¿s life
Review: Obviously the book tells a story based on the life of the famous painter Paul Gauguin but it is also a projection of Maugham's thoughts and desires. In fact his main character, Charles Strickland, is exactly like Maugham would like to be because he sacrifies everyone and everything just to follow his inner vision, which is to paint. He doesn't care about society he doesn't care about material things, he just lives for ideas and is indifferent to everything else. That's according to some philosophers, the true and only way to be an artist and I think that it is also Maugham's opinion about it. Therefore he created a figure who is nothing but his ideal picture of himself, as he did not have the courage and the force to live it in reality, probably due to his constant fear of losing all social relations. It's a really good book which could give you, the reader, the force to realize yourself and to do only what you really like and give up everything else to reach your aim.
Rating:
Summary: An exotic atmosphere
Review: Maugham knows how to make an unfriendly person sympathetic, and that's really something special in this novel. Strickland seems inhuman, nevertheless he can be a model for everybody even today because he does what he wants - he just goes his way straight in his later years and he doesn't care about other people's opinions. I can't accept some statements made by the author about women though. Probably Maugham wants to provoke or to make people think about them, but I think that's not the right way to do it. I liked Maugh's style of narration because he mostly uses simple sentences, which often contain a lot of interesting ideas. Maugham writes a lot of dialogues, and they aren't superficial. On the contrary, they are very unusual because of the Strickland's way of always speaking his mind even if it hurts people around him.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best but still very good
Review: No writer incorporates such realistic dialogue in his novels as Maugham and this book is certainly no exception. While Charles Strickland is an appalling human being ,the narrator(Maugham) finds something that attracts him and the reader to this character who is completely indifferent to the needs and emotional wounds he inflicts on others. This man who in midlife turns from a fairly normal respectable middle class life to live as a starving artist becomes a mystery that Maugham slowly allows the reader to sort out.Ultimately I found it difficult to sort out how I felt about this character. An excellent read.
Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite historical novel, shows Maugham's observer skills.
Review: I became interested in Maugham's work after seeing the remake of "The Razor's Edge" film. I then read the book and was enamored with his descriptive capability. Just by chance I picked up this volume and it's even better than "Razor"! The novel is loosely based on an account of the life of French artist Paul Gauguin. While there are historical inaccuracies, e.g., the real Gauguin died of heart failure unlike Strickland, the novel's main character, who died of leprosy, one expects such dramatic effect from a novel. Most important in the book are the assumptions people made of Gauguin/Strickland. When he left his presumably comfortable home, for instance, his wife, as well as her friends and acquaintances, assumed it was another woman who'd led him astray, not his passion for something he hadn't yet figured out. To that assumption, Strickland was contemptuous to say the least. Of other observations Maugham made of Strickland's observers, many are posterworthy. I have, indeed, made graphic posters of some of them for example of the observation that "some men are born out of their due place," or another on those who like the feel they're "unconventional," how that's most often a facade. It's a wonderful book and I recommend it particularly to those who feel alien to the world in which they're stuck. I recommend it too to those who are bored to tears with "English lit." This could rejuvenate your interest in the masterpieces and in good writing in general.
Rating:
Summary: Subtle, Insightful and Brilliant
Review: "To recognize it (Beauty) you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination." And so the narrator's friend passes along a bit of wisdom early in this magnificent book. Of course, the narrator does not understand and must, on his own, develop knowledge, sensitivity and imagination around the life of the fictionalized-Paul Gauguin, Charles Strickland. The narration is cunning and subtle throughout. The narrator begins as a young novitiate of life, sides with convention, utters a few misogynistic statements (which are good for a laugh/is this how women were viewed by some in the early 1900's?) and, oh so slowly, develops into a person of sensitivity and imagination. The transformation is subtle and quiet, ending with a physical return to the place where it all started. Those characters, who he had originally thought so highly of, are still the same, mean and opportunistic. He sees their stasis and reflects on the greatness of the man that he himself once thought mean. With each new Maugham book I read, I gain a deeper appreciation for the wonder of his writing. The story is effortless and at the same time loaded with significant themes that give me pause for consideration.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting, thoughtful novel.
Review: It has been noted many times that artists are usually not the most pleasant human beings to be around; Maugham's novel is, among other things, a compelling examination of why this is so. The obsessed artist who dominates this book, Charles Strickland (based on the notorious Paul Gauguin), walks away from his cushy middle-class existence in England to pursue his dream to paint, amid frightful poverty, in France. Strickland is an unforgettable character, an inarticulate, brutishly sensual creature, callously indifferent to his fellow man and even his own health, who lives only to record his private visions on canvas. It would be a mistake to read this novel as an inspiring tale of the triumph of the spirit. Strickland is an appalling human being--but the world itself, Maugham seems to say, is a cruel, forbidding place. The author toys with the (strongly Nietzschean) idea that men like Charles Strickland may somehow be closer to the mad pulse of life, and cannot therefore be dismissed as mere egotists. The moralists among us, the book suggests, are simply shrinking violets if not outright hypocrites. It is not a very cheery conception of humanity (and arguably not an accurate one), but the questions Maugham raises are fascinating. Aside from that, he's a wonderful storyteller. This book is a real page turner.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant tale of a misunderstood genius
Review: This book is incredible. Maugham's delicious descriptive sense and writing ability are a delight. For anyone who feels like no one understands them (and don't we all?) will enjoy this urge. It will also give all readers an overwhelming urge to create somethig with passion. I suggest you read it and decide for yourself, but you will not be dissapointed.
Rating:
Summary: Never Say Never
Review: I first read The Moon and Sixpence in my early 20s--my "British period"--and it immediately entered my personal literary hall of fame. I was carried away by its exoticism, romance, and theme of hope and renewal, balanced by plenty of Maugham's trademark cynical observation. Then I would have given it 5 stars; I recently re-read it and downgraded it to 4. Maugham has the tendency of many of his peers to overly soliloquize, which irritates modern readers, and his misogyny is amply evident. Still it is a wonderful well-written book capable of imbuing an awe for life and limitless possibility and inspiring the feeling that "it ain't over til it's over." The character of Charles Strickland as misanthropic artist is fascinating. Sick of your job and your current situation? Read this short novel on a lonely rainy day and you'll find yourself transported, maybe even uplifted.
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