Maugham has always been one of my favorite authors. I admire his love for his characters, his straight-forward prose, and his deep insights into the human condition. I liked "The Razor's Edge" and I enjoyed "The Painted Veil," but "Of Human Bondage" hit me as no novel has in very long time. It is one that I desperately wish that I had read when I was younger because I feel that its insights and epiphanies would have made my teens and twenties a much more engaging experience. In my mind, the novel is a masterpiece.

The novel follows Philip Carey from the age of eight to about thirty. Quite autobiographical but with numerous fictional flourishes, the novel is a classic bildungsroman (a coming-of-age novel). At first, I found the novel slow but its minute pacing and careful plotting are all towards a greater design. If I had to encapsulate its theme in one line, I would point to one from the beginning of the novel: "We love that which makes us suffer." Indeed, the novel is focused on the varied kinds of suffering the protagonist experiences throughout his life and how that suffering, while it may not have an intrinsically deeper meaning, nonetheless comes to be a part of the threads of our lives. We seek connections but feel that we, like Philip with his club foot, are somehow deformed and unworthy of love.

One criticism often laid against the book (and Maugham generally) is his portrayal of women. While some might say that his portrayal of Mildred, the uneducated waitress who becomes the obsessive object of Philip's one-sided affections, is sexist and one-dimensional. But I think the one-dimensional character is mostly intentional here. She is meant to be an object in Philip's imagination and her vapidness hides a person gripped by inadequacies and poverty of mind, material, and spirit.

If you have not read this novel, you must. Note passages that move you and make you think. I still find myself repeatedly returning to it. It may not be to everyone's taste, but I think that out of the the novels I've read by this author, it is the first that I can truly say deserves to be called a classic and is well-worth your time.