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A review by apechild
Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
3.0
It did take me a little while to get into this, but when I got going, I found it very engrossing. I think the problem for me at the beginning was that I wasn't sure where it was going; and also I found the snobbery and attitudes of the old class system very infuriating and tiring. I wasn't sure that I wanted to read a book where everyone was going to continue as though these attitudes were perfectly just. But then the story got going.
It's narrated by a fifty something English writing, William Ashenden was it, and through talking with a popular (but perhaps bland) writer Alroy whatever his name was, who wants to write a book about the deceased writer Edward Driffield; Ashenden goes through his own memories and experiences with Driffield. He knew him when he was a teenager staying with his aunt and uncle (unimaginative snobs) - he never explained what had happened with his parents either - was he an orphan? and spent summer holiday/Christmas holiday etc with Edward Driffield and his first wife, Rosie Driffield; whom everyone looked down their nose at in retrospect as she had worked as a barmaid once and was a bit promiscious. He then knew them again for a couple of years in London when he was in his early twenties as a medical student. But his memories are as much about Rosie as they are about Edward.
It's curious the way a lot of them had inklings about his marriage with the first wife, how it was awfully common, all the wife's fault, and it was probably best not to go into too much detail in the biography that Alroy is going to write because people don't want to be upset by such ideas of Driffield. The reading public have created a persona of him, and the truth doesn't really matter - in fact they don't really want to know. His second wife really perpetuated this - steadily getting rid of all his furniture, his writing desk etc from the house and replacing them with items she thought more fitting for a writer of his reputation. I can't say I liked his second wife at all; she was married to the idea of the writer rather than the man, and was preparing for his passing and how she'd be the guardian of his literary memory from from the word go. And yet everyone thinks she was the better wife.
I suppose in a way it's a bit of a coming of age story for the narrator, as this is happening during his teens and his twenties. He starts off completely formed by the snobbish attitudes of his relations, but gradually is forced to question these attitudes as he gets to know the Driffields; then in growing up learns more about relationships, sex, marriage and how complicated these things can get. And it was so sad how in the end Driffield seemed to be surrounded by people who weren't interested in who he really was, and were so keen to mould him into what they thought he was. It makes the earlier scenes when he was living with his first wife so much more cosy. And the time when he'd written his best works.
It's narrated by a fifty something English writing, William Ashenden was it, and through talking with a popular (but perhaps bland) writer Alroy whatever his name was, who wants to write a book about the deceased writer Edward Driffield; Ashenden goes through his own memories and experiences with Driffield. He knew him when he was a teenager staying with his aunt and uncle (unimaginative snobs) - he never explained what had happened with his parents either - was he an orphan? and spent summer holiday/Christmas holiday etc with Edward Driffield and his first wife, Rosie Driffield; whom everyone looked down their nose at in retrospect as she had worked as a barmaid once and was a bit promiscious. He then knew them again for a couple of years in London when he was in his early twenties as a medical student. But his memories are as much about Rosie as they are about Edward.
It's curious the way a lot of them had inklings about his marriage with the first wife, how it was awfully common, all the wife's fault, and it was probably best not to go into too much detail in the biography that Alroy is going to write because people don't want to be upset by such ideas of Driffield. The reading public have created a persona of him, and the truth doesn't really matter - in fact they don't really want to know. His second wife really perpetuated this - steadily getting rid of all his furniture, his writing desk etc from the house and replacing them with items she thought more fitting for a writer of his reputation. I can't say I liked his second wife at all; she was married to the idea of the writer rather than the man, and was preparing for his passing and how she'd be the guardian of his literary memory from from the word go. And yet everyone thinks she was the better wife.
I suppose in a way it's a bit of a coming of age story for the narrator, as this is happening during his teens and his twenties. He starts off completely formed by the snobbish attitudes of his relations, but gradually is forced to question these attitudes as he gets to know the Driffields; then in growing up learns more about relationships, sex, marriage and how complicated these things can get. And it was so sad how in the end Driffield seemed to be surrounded by people who weren't interested in who he really was, and were so keen to mould him into what they thought he was. It makes the earlier scenes when he was living with his first wife so much more cosy. And the time when he'd written his best works.