Rating: 
Summary: Good Maugham Book
Review: Maugham writes a first-person narrative about an English painter / artist named Charles Strickland. The narrator is a struggling playwright who is in association with many artist types. During his various meetings, he becomes acquaintances with the wife of Charles Strickland. The Strickland's are a comfortable family until (at the age of forty-seven) Charles decides to throw away his marriage, his kids, and his career to paint. Strickland moves to Paris where he does odd jobs for money, plays chess, and paints when he is able to. According to the narrator, his pictures aren't any good, but Strickland is happy doing what he loves and doesn't care about the consequences. However, Strickland, is actually a genius and he leaves behind a trail of priceless masterpieces. The narrator has many interludes with Strickland while he lives in Paris and when he loses track of Strickland, he learns about Strickland's painting life on the island of Haiti. Strickland is not a likeable character. He doesn't care what people think about him and is pretty much self-centered and is synical. However, he is open about and will candidly point out that most people are self-centered. Strickland even steals the wife of a friend who helped him during one of his low times. Somehow, the narrator and Strickland form a friendly bond and the reader gets a chance to know Strickland personally. The book was interesting. The story's primary message is that about art and happiness: that one should be doing it for themselves and not for glory or money. In addition, that when one is doing what truly makes one happy that it is priceless.
Rating: 
Summary: A story filled with inspiration
Review: This story reminds us all that it is never to late to change your life and follow the inner passion that guides you. Charles Strickland was 35 years old when he left his financially comfortable life and family to paint. It is remarkable to experience the power, the struggles and the ramifications of someone who is committed to living life only for himself. It is a strong reminder for those of us who do heed that call, that living for yourself and your own happiness is possible and that many others before us have followed the same path in spirit.I've read the novel several times in the past 8 years...it is interesting to mark my own personal growth and reaction to Maugham's inspiring characters.
Rating:
Summary: On par with 'Of Human Bondage'
Review: One of his best works. Maugham uses the first person to tell this tale (as he does with most of his other stories) and there is a sense that most if not all of his writings contain many autobiographical parts. This book is one of them. It is the story of how the life of the writer and that of a painter criss-cross until the death of the artist. The artist is based on the life of Paul Gauguin (the painters name is different in the book, but the similarities are too compelling). If you enjoy 19th century art history, you must read this book!
Rating:
Summary: A needed look at obsession
Review: This book is cynicism without any pomp. The protagonist, an aspiring artist named Charles Strickland, drops all links with humanity including himself. With social and ethical obligations and even all but the most minimal attention to his own comfort disgarded, he pursues creating raw beauty. Severing these connections results in a personal indifference to marketing his work or providing a context of understanding, his art is not appreciated until after his death. This novel is about sacraficing everything including one's virtue for a singular achievement. This book is appealing as an expression of this idea and is especially of interest to those with a fascination with art or art history. People who understand cynicism deeply will appreciate the lack of unsubstantiated motivation in the protagonist, he can be seen as a champion of truth if one has a jaded view on human motivation and morality.
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Summary: Naked truth and raw emotion
Review: "The Moon and Sixpence" proves that the brilliant insight into the human psyche displayed by W.S. Maugham in his first book ("Of Human Bondage") was no fluke. In "The Moon and Sixpence" Maugham violently reveals the strength and depth of our relationships with our passions, and with those we live among and meet along the way to where we are going. W.S. Maugham has a tremedous grasp of human emotion and character, and his printed revelations are soothing in that I know I am not alone in my way of thinking and feeling. Outstanding literature. Maugham is one of the top wordsmiths of all time.
Rating:
Summary: A book to behold!
Review: I am facinated by this book. W. Somerset Maugham reaches into the character of Charles Strickland in a way that makes you want to read on and on. I missed witnessing an avalanch because of this book.......and I don't regret it one single bit!
Rating:
Summary: The Language of Passion
Review: Maugham takes a fascinating look into the life of Charles Strickland, a man who gives up his comfortable life as a stock broker, breaks the social contract, abandons his family, and takes up painting. These changes condemn him to a life of poverty and disdain by most who know him. The story is related by an aspiring writer who never seems to be able to quite get the painter to admit he is either remorseful of all the human wreckage he's left in his wake, or so uncomfortable in this new life that he's sorry for having made such a hash of his it. Despite his lack of satisfactory answers, the writer continues to be fascinated by Strickland, who has found a means of expression that transcends language. Strickland understands the writer well enough, having lived in his culture. The writer, on the other hand, cannot possibly understand Strickland, having never been so passionate about anything in his short life. It is this passion that both draws others to Strickland, and causes him to reject outright everything they hold dear. The book raises several intersting questions: Who makes the social contract anyway, and did Strickland knowingly sign on, or was he simply incorporated into it by society? Would it have been acceptable for Strickland to abandon his family to become a priest, missionary, or some other more acceptable form of aesthete? While the book is loosely based on the life of Paul Gaugin, it is really more about W. Somerset Maugham and his search for beauty and truth. In his fictionalized account of that search, Maugham shows us that while the search may be noble, the journey is not necessarily beautiful to everyone, especially those not involved. Strickland's single-minded search is especially ugly to those who at one time meant something to him, as they are informed dispassionately and without malice they mean nothing to the painter except a meal or a small loan. As he draws ever nearer his language of painting, Strickland gradually sheds even these occasional interactions, to a point where even his very life has no meaning except in the context of his art. This book is a must-read for anyone contemplating a life in the arts. While Strickland is a thoroughly dislikable character, he is one without artifice, totally lacking the ability to say anything other than what is true to him. He is a man consumed by his passion, completely lacking the need for approval. Maugham as usual creates a work that is both powerful and thought-provoking. "Moon and Sixpence" satisfys on at least two levels; as a cracking good story, and as a philosophical treatise on art, beauty and passion.
Rating:
Summary: a thrilling investigation into the mind of an artist
Review: A thrilling investigation into the mind of a man, who renounces social conventions, human bonding and mundane needs to search for an outlet for the artistic devil inside of him. An exceptional semi biography of an eccentric human being that renounced the world for art. The book depicts Charles' relationships with woman, fellow man, and death with a painful truthfulness that one can't help feeling sympathy for a man so base and yet so honest.
Rating:
Summary: Painful but fascinating
Review: Maugham shows himself to be a misogynist, and perhaps even a misanthropist given the lack of likeable characters (including the narrator) in this cerebral novel. Nevertheless, it holds one's interest from start to finish, like good gossip. The diverse stages of the painter's life, and the people he disrupts along the way, illustrate the power of obsession, for good and ill.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best novels I've ever read and Maugham's finest.
Review: A must read for any fan of S. Maugham or serious fans of literature and art. Offers page after page of profound insight into human nature and the meaning of our lives. Highly recommended!!
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