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Cakes and Ale
W. Somerset Maugham
#UB1992
Paperback, 308 pages; 2000 (1930)
$14.00
 Members' Price: $11.90
Charmingly funny and acutely perceptive, W. Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale could be described as a novel about a biography. Alroy Kear is commissioned by the prim second wife of Edward Driffield (an acclaimed Victorian novelist) to write the story of her recently deceased husband's life. Kear is aware that his subject, as a younger man, "was just a wee bit unscrupulous in money matters and he had a kink in him that made him take a strange pleasure in the society of his inferiors and some of his personal habits were rather disagreeable,"--but, as it turns out, Kear doesn't know the half of it. Details about Rosie--Driffield's wildly unconventional first wife-might pose quite a challenge to Kear's gentlemanly discretion as a biographer! Controversial upon its original publication in 1930, Cakes and Ale, remains today a luminous and exhilarating satire.
(CH)
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