Mrs. Craddock

Rating:
Summary: Nothing for people who like romance and kitsch
Review: As a woman you can identify yourself very well with Bertha, but there is a big difference between the social situations. That's exactly what makes this book so special, you see yourself even if the reactions of Bertha are often stupid and wrong you understand what she feels and why she's doing it. You see that maybe in her situation you would have reacted the same way and that makes you thinking About it. There are many little things which tell so much about people's emotions and the situations.

Rating:
Summary: Maugham's as usual
Review: I'm a huge fan of the work of W. Somerset Maugham and I buy every book from him that catches my eye. Mrs. Craddock was not exception. The story of love and disappointment endured by Bertha Craddock is an odissey on how the women perceptions change when they find that they're not loved in the way they expected. Me, as a male, couldn't help but feel sympathy for her and get angry at the way Bertha's husband snubs her need for love. The end is marvelous and this makes the novel a must read for everyone who's ever been in love. (I guess everyone)

Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting
Review: It's a very interesting book. It shows our feelings very well. It's simple to read. But I think it's more a book for women than for men. Mrs Craddock is an intelligent person and she has married a simple man. In the beginning she is very in love with him. And they are lucky. But later she notices that he is not Mr Right and her life gets boring. She leaves him and meets someone else in Italy.... I can recommend this book to everyone which is interested in love stories. But it's not a simple love story with a happy ending!

Rating:
Summary: A Neglected Masterwork
Review: W. Somerset Maugham has long existed somewhat on the periphery of literary and critical respectability: "a first-rate second-rater," someone once called him. But the more I read Maugham the more I become convinced that this is a snobbish appraisal, derived perhaps from his extraordinary popular success (if it's popular, it can't be good) and, later, from revelations regarding his homosexuality along with some unpleasant personal details related by various biographers. But none of this should get in the way of a reader seeking out Maugham's best work---"Of Human Bondage," certainly, and the much-less-known "Mrs. Craddock."

"Mrs. Craddock" is a stunningly powerful novel of one woman's compromises with the realities of love. Reminiscent on the one hand of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," and on the other of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," this novel has a vitality and brilliance of characterization all its own. Bertha, the heroine, is superbly rendered: a woman who is unable to understand until too late the nature of her emotional folly, a victim of her own self-imposed romantic delusions. Edward, her husband, is equally compelling: a fundamentally good man who has simply, in essence, married the wrong woman. Watching these two mismatched souls attempting to co-exist is engrossing, painful, and exhilarating. The story is solidly written in the usual Maugham plain style, and is just as relevant today as it must have been the year it was published.

This "lost" Maugham novel---ignored even by many Maugham admirers---deserves a wider readership. Those interested in Maugham's fiction of this period, or in turn-of-the-century novels centered on women, owe it to themselves to try this unjustly neglected masterwork.

Rating:
Summary: A Neglected Masterwork
Review: W. Somerset Maugham has long existed somewhat on the periphery of literary and critical respectability: "a first-rate second-rater," someone once called him. But the more I read Maugham the more I become convinced that this is a snobbish appraisal, derived perhaps from his extraordinary popular success (if it's popular, it can't be good) and, later, from revelations regarding his homosexuality along with some unpleasant personal details related by various biographers. But none of this should get in the way of a reader seeking out Maugham's best work---"Of Human Bondage," certainly, and the much-less-known "Mrs. Craddock."

"Mrs. Craddock" is a stunningly powerful novel of one woman's compromises with the realities of love. Reminiscent on the one hand of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," and on the other of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," this novel has a vitality and brilliance of characterization all its own. Bertha, the heroine, is superbly rendered: a woman who is unable to understand until too late the nature of her emotional folly, a victim of her own self-imposed romantic delusions. Edward, her husband, is equally compelling: a fundamentally good man who has simply, in essence, married the wrong woman. Watching these two mismatched souls attempting to co-exist is engrossing, painful, and exhilarating. The story is solidly written in the usual Maugham plain style, and is just as relevant today as it must have been the year it was published.

This "lost" Maugham novel---ignored even by many Maugham admirers---deserves a wider readership. Those interested in Maugham's fiction of this period, or in turn-of-the-century novels centered on women, owe it to themselves to try this unjustly neglected masterwork.