About this title: Edward Driffield is a writer idolized by London's literati. His second wife commissions a second-rate popular novelist named Roy Kear to write Driffield's biography. When Kear explores Driffield's past, however, he finds out about Rosie, Driffield's first wife--who is not nearly so respectable as the woman who commissioned the biography, but who despite her commonness is clearly the muse of Driffield's greatest work.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: 1st printing.
Binding: PB.
Publisher: Avon Books No. 50., New York
Date Published: 1950.
Description: Vintage paperback reading copy (name stamp). First issue with 50 Avon titles listed inside back cover. Book has a wave, otherwise well-bound and clean. read more
Description: Good. 2000-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: PB, Pocket Books, Inc., #1158, New York, Feb., 1957. Covers are showing very slight wear, crack at pg.8 and brittle, slightly shaken, contents browned and clean. Good. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: New Avon Library, New York
Date Published: 1944
Description: Fair. Avon 50. Fair copy, front cover highly creased, spine ends shelfworn, a blue marker mark on front blurb page. A reading copy. read more
Edition: 13th Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Pocket
Date Published: 1964
Description: Good. Mild shelf and corner wear; Minor bumping\wear to spine ends; Mild spine crease; Mild tanning to pages with tanning to edges; Mild rubbing\wear to covers and spine; Good Reading Copy; ** Free USPS tracking and confirm on US orders ** read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Pocket
Date Published: 1964
Description: A good reading copy only. A former library book with the usual identifiers. Book has tanning or browning due to normal aging process. -, Mass Market PaperBack, Good / read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Pocket
Date Published: 1957
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 186 p. 16mo softcover Clean interior with text tanning. Firmly bound in clean soft cover with nice cover art. No creases to cover or spine. Very minimal edgewear. A good sturdy copy. read more
Edition: First Paperback Edition
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1948
Description: Good. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. This novel has been called Maugham's "most genial book. " It is a comedy about Rosie Driffield, the good-natured wife of a great author, a writer who may be based on Thomas Hardy. 221 pages. This rather old paperback is in good but delicate condition. The binding is solid and uncreased. The cover is worn around the edges, has two creased corners and a signature of the cover. The paper is somewhat darkened in the outer margins and there are about a dozen dogeared ... read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Pocket 1158
Date Published: 1957
Description: Very Good. First Edition. First Pocket Books printing, February, 1957. Mild page toning but otyherwise unmarked, bright and clean with uncreased spine. Enjoy reading with a real book in your hands. read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: The Modern Library
Date Published: 1950
Description: Good. No Jacket. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. A good hardcover copy, lightly used. The spine is solid, with just a little bit of a lean. The green cloth binding shows only very mild wear, with light rubbing at the corners but no fraying of the cloth. The text is clean and unmarked. 272 pages. read more
"The last sentence on the back of the Penguin Classic jacket cover of this book reads, "A controversial novel when it was published, Cakes and Ale brings us a heroine so sensual and modern that she's still able to raise an eyebrow today." Unfortunately, the reader doesn't get to the sensual, controversial part of the novel until over 200 pages into it. The rest of the book is about a writer writing in England. It is well written but I would only recommend it to those, like myself, who are Anglophiles interested in the art of writing. This gives the book a rather small audience, I would imagine. Rosie, the afore mentioned "modern" heroin doesn't really strike me as terribly modern in the author's portrayal of her. She is sexual to the point of being something of a nymphomaniac but the narrator makes a point to say that this is so simply because she is simple and sensual in the most earthy kind of way. She is not strong willed, educated and independent as a modern woman would be expected to be, she's sweet and loving and always up for a role in the hay. She is said to walk with, "The firm tread of the country woman who likes to feel the good earth under her feet." If one must place her in any particular time I would be more inclined to call her Edenic than modern. She is old fashion in the sense that she exhibits human urges which predate social standards and the book (within the book) most expressly written about Rosie, by her author husband, The Cup of Life, is clearly about the death of innocence but it's also about the writer's exploitation of it. Cakes and Ale is too concerned with writers and the act of writing for Rosie's role as muse to be overlooked. She is muse to two writers and a painter. Rosie is the essence of nature, the rest is spun around her like a work of fiction."
"This book was a pure delight. Maugham is such an interesting writer and although he did not think himself a great writer, I believe he does have his moments of greatness. I loved Of Human Bondage and this one again uses material from his own life yet again - particularly stuff to do with his childhood spent with his vicar uncle and his aunt in the country.
The book starts off with a bit of a pattern to it. The book is written in first person singular - we will talk a bit more about that later - and the I in the piece begins by mentioning that he has been invited to have a chat with an old 'friend' and fellow writer. There then follows a digression on the nature of friendships with writers (a not terribly kind discussion). There is then the meeting itself where it becomes fairly clear that this writer is interested in what the I in the book knows about another writer who has fairly recently died. The I in the book had grown up in a village where the dead writer had lived part of his early life and then went back to in his final years. However, about the only thing the I can remember is that the dead writer had taught him how to ride a bicycle. The other writer says the dead writer's first wife was a bit common and not well liked - however, this is definitely not how the I in the book remembers her.
They part, with the other writer less than happy with the outcome of their chat, and this sets the I in the novel thinking back to his childhood and in particular his curious relationship with the dead novelist and his wife - which turns out to be much more involved than he had admitted to the other writer.
This pattern is then repeated. I won't tell you the whole story, but the point is that up until the point in the story that I have told you about Rosie, the wife of the dead novelist, is only a minor character. That doesn't last.
I find jealousy, particularly sexual jealousy, to be a fascinating theme in novels. There was a time when I could be painfully jealous - but over the years I have decided that jealousy is a pointless and stupid emotion. All the same, it is a beast we are best not to trifle with. If we can learn nothing from Othello, we ought to be able to learn at least that. This is not your usual cautionary tale about jealousy though. In fact, this is nothing like your usual tale about anything.
I don't want to give too much away about this book, as part of the joy of it really is in finding out what was going to happen next - all the same, it must have been quite a shocking book when it first came out. The idea that perhaps women might actually even enjoy sex may have been deeply shocking, in fact, probably is deeply shocking to some people. At least, people both at the time and now are and were prepared to pretend that such an idea was deeply shocking.
Cakes and Ale, the title, comes from a line in Twelfth Night by Sir Toby Belch, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" And this is the central tension that drives the novel; a novel of a society coming out of Victorian sensibilities and trying to come to terms with a woman who clearly does not fit comfortably into those particularly tight corsets
This was a lovely book, one I liked very much. There are many quotable quotes (and I do like a book with lots of quotable quotes). But the best thing about it was that it never seemed to have to try too hard. Like I said, it was dealing with a theme that would have been quite controversial in 1930 and it did so in a clear, up front and interesting way.
The back cover of the edition I have (printed in 1966, the year of Maugham's death) says this is his gayest (meaning most cheerful) novel. All I can say is that his other novels must be pretty depressing - this one isn't really all that depressing, but it is hardly a laugh-fest, except when he is being nasty about his fellow writers, of course, or Americans, or prudes. The saddest character in the novel, I think, is the second wife, the nurse and assurer of the dead novelist's ongoing reputation (posterity may be a fickle mistress, but a mistress of a dead artist is forever faithful). The scene in which the I writer runs his finger along the spine of the books in the dead writer's library to see how much dust is there and finds none (implying they have been recently purchased for appearance sake) - to which he ironically makes a mental note that the housekeeper must be very efficient is almost painful to read.
Now, in chapter 16 of this book there is a wonderful discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of writing a book in the first person singular - in fact, this occurs at just about the time when the main character would have his personal pronoun at just about its most perpendicular - if that isn't being too crude. There is a lovely bit where he makes fun of books on how to write novels, 'On his advice I read The Craft of Fiction by Mr Percy Lubbock, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Henry James; after that I read Aspects of the Novel by Mr E. M. Forster, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Mr E.M. Forster; then I read by Mr Edwin Muir, from which I learned nothing at all.'
In this bit of the novel he says something which I think is terribly interesting and terribly important about the decision to write a novel in first person (i.e. with lots of 'I's) or to decide to write it in omniscient narration (where the writer has privileged access to the inner workings of the minds of everyone in the novel).
"Sometimes the novelist feels himself like God and is prepared to tell you everything about his characters; sometimes, however, he does not; and then he tells you not everything that is to be known about them but the little he knows himself; and since as we grow older we feel ourselves less and less like God I should not be surprised to learn that with advancing years the novelist grows less and less inclined to describe more than his own experience had given him. The first person singular is a very useful device for this limited purpose."
And if I didn't love him before, it was impossible not to love him after his saying that. I enjoyed this book very much. Not as much as Of Human Bondage, but enough - more than enough."
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