Contemporary Book Club -- The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Note:  We are meeting on the Third Tuesday of November due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Title is inspired by the club’s recent reading of The House of Doors.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Set against the backdrop of England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil recounts the story of the stunning, superficial, and lonely Kitty Fane. Upon learning that she is involved in an extramarital affair, her husband, a bacteriologist, forces her to travel with him to the center of a cholera outbreak in China.

But once there, deprived of the small but flourishing society she struggled so hard to create in Hong Kong, and in the British community of her younger years, she is driven by her newly emerging conscience to re-evaluate her life and discover how to love. The title is taken from an 1824 sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the superbly written narrative is a beautiful and moving testament to the way humans can change, adapt, and overcome obstacles.

Links of Interest:

1955 interview with the author

The Times -- a rereading of the novel

New Criterion