About this title: On a Christmas trip to Paris after the Great War, Charley Mason meets a tragically self-destructive Russian woman whose world fell apart after the revolution of 1917.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: P.F. Collier & Son
Date Published: 1939
Description: Good. ---314 pgs. Interior-Nice overall condition. The boards have only light signs of use. -Publish Place: New York-Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., N. Y.
Date Published: 1939
Description: Reading Copy. No Jacket. Hard Back. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. X-Library with normal flaws.....The hard cover has shelf wear. Light yellowing to the pages. Spine cock...We are very careful when we list our books, but sometimes something minor may get by.. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doudleday, Doran & Company, Inc., New York
Date Published: 1939
Description: Good. No Jacket. Novel. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Book: Good. Minor wear. Front and rear boards bowed. No jacket. 314 pages clean and bright, binding tight. "With a journey before him, Charley Mason's mother was anxious that he should make a good breakfast, but he was too excited to eat. It was Christmas Eve and he was going to Paris..." read more
Edition: 1984 reprint.
Binding: paperback
Publisher: New York: Penguin
ISBN-13:9780140026467ISBN:0140026460
Description: 252pp. paperback: near Very Good [couple of words in ink; text is age browned; else nrVG] A novel of Paris on the eve of the Second World War by the prolific English novelist William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: P.F. Collier & Son/Doubleday, Do
Date Published: 1939
Description: Good. First Edition. Ex-Library-Stated 1st Edition--314 pgs. Interior-Nice overall condition w/ ex-library referencing. The boards have only light signs of use. -Publish Place: New York-Size: 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co
Date Published: 1939
Description: Text is clean, No dj, moderate cloth wear. 314pp. Previous owner's name on inside cover.100% guaranteed. No hassle return policy. read more
"Written just before the outbreak of World War II, this story warns the British middle class about the hazards of being compacent and naïve in a dangerous world. The story is simple: a young Cambridge-educated Englishman, Charles, is rewarded for entering the family business (initially he had wanted to be a painter) with a holiday trip to Paris "to see some pictures." There he is met by a lifelong friend Simon, now a journalist, who has become a fanatic who is preparing himself through rigorous asceticism and self-discipline for a high post in the communist or fascist government that will surely, sooner or later, topple the democratic government of England. His model: Dzerjinsky, insensate head of the Cheka who in the early days of Bolshevik rule maintained Soviet control though brutal repression of the people. To amuse himself, Simon hooks Charles up with a Russian prostitute named Lydia Berger who, it turns out, is selling her body to atone for a thrill killing committed by her beloved husband Robert, a psychopath who is serving a long prison sentence in French Guiana. In this coming-of-age novel good-natured but naïve Charles, raised in the sanguine comfort of an English middle-class family of means, is exposed to suffering and aspects of human nature-Simon's, Lydia's, Robert's-that though he does not fully understand them nevertheless so transform him that when he returns home he is unable again to view in the same happy light the sheltered see-no-evil life of the well-to-do English. Christmas Holiday flows well, as one would expect of a Maugham novel, and his observations about the complexity of human nature are always interesting. He achieves his three stylistic goals of lucidity, simplicity and euphony. Maugham's substantial literary production was uneven; a few of his novels (e.g., Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge) were excellent, several quite good, and the rest mediocre. I would rank Christmas Holiday high in the second group.
She gave him on a sudden a disdainful glance. "Do you look upon yourself as being noble and self-sacrificing? Or are you sorry for me or only curious?" Charley could not imagine why she seemed angry with him or why she said these wounding things. "Why should I feel sorry for you? Or curious?" He meant her to understand that she was not the first prostitute he had met in his life and he was not likely to be impressed with a life-story which was probably sordid and in all likelihood untrue. Lydia stared at him with an experession which to him looked like incredulous surprise. "What did your friend Simon tell you about me?" "Nothing." "Why do you redden when you say that?" "I didn't know I reddened," he smiled. In fact Simon had told him that she was not a bad romp, and would give him his money's worth, but that was not the sort of thing he felt inclined to tell her just then. With her pale face and swollen eyelids, in that poor brown dress and the black felt hat, there was nothing to remind one of the creature, in her blue Turkish trousers, with a naked body, who had had a curious, exotic attractiveness. It was another person altogether, quiet, respectable, demure, with whom Charley could as little think of going to bed as with one of the junior mistresses at Patsy's old school. Lydia relapsed into silence. She seemed to be sunk in reverie. When at last she spoke it was as though she were continuing her train of thought rather than addressing him. "If I cried just now in church it wasn't for the reason that you thought. I've cried enough for that, heaven knows, but just then it was for something different. I felt so lonely. All those people, they have a country, and in that country, homes; tomorrow they'll spend Christmas day together.... But I am a stranger. I have no country, I have no home, I have no language. I belong nowhere. I am outcast.""
"On my to re-read list. I went through a phase where I ravished everything by Maugham I could get my hands on. He's still my favorite author and though I may not get back to this book for some time, I know that I will eventually..."
"This was a must to take away with me given its title. And very glad I am too that I did! This is the story of Charley Mason who at 23 is treated to a Christmas trip to Paris by his father. Charley of course dreams of adventure. What he gets is a sort of education. There he is a the son of an upper middle class family (albeit one originally of humbler ancestry) who has been pretty much sheltered all his life, and the world he encounters is really very different. On his first evening in Paris he meets Lydia - aka Princess Olga - a young Russian woman - at the Serail, a high class nightclub and brothel. It is in fact Lydia's story that the reader is quickly drawn into. In just a few days Charley is learn a lot of the world. I really enjoyed this engaging novel first published in 1939."
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