The Moon and Sixpence (24 page)

Also available in Vintage

W. Somerset Maugham

They did not behave like lovers, but like familiar friends
...her eyes rested on him quietly, as though he were not a
man, but a chair or a table.
'

Cakes and Ale
is the book that roused a storm of controversy when it was first published. It is both a wickedly satirical novel about contemporary literary poseurs and a skilfully crafted study of freedom. It is also the book by which Maugham most wanted to be remembered – and probably still is.

'A formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents...precision, tact, irony, and that beautiful negative thing which in so good a writer becomes positive – total, but
total
absence of pomposity'
Spectator

'One of my favourite writers' Gabriel García Márquez