The Painted Veil

So far, this summer seems to have been all about reading new authors for the first time and this  one was no different. This is an engrossing narrative which throws you straight into the midst of an extra-marital affair and an emotionally manipulative husband who sets out to punish his wife for her indiscretion. Published in 1925, it caused a storm on it's release with it's honest portrayal of adultery and a bored and unfulfilled wife. But from the perspective of a modern reader, it is not the adultery which has the ability to shock, but rather the fall out from the affair. 

"Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whisky and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither."

Kitty Fane's husband, Walter, is a biologist and when he is offered the opportunity to work in an area of China ravaged by cholera, he accepts. With no where else to go, Kitty soon realises that she has to go with him and to almost certain death. Needless to say I could not put this novel down once I had started, and I longed to know what the cold and remote Walter had planned next. The portrayal of Kitty is outstanding; it is so rare to find a male novelist who can paint the machinations of a woman's mind with any degree of accuracy, but he does. Death looms large throughout the novel, and Maugham presents a husband and wife who are both curiously resigned to their own demise.  Neither character are particularly likeable but it doesn't really matter for the original and absorbing story carries you through until the very last page. 

Just a note to say...

I've settled on a new blog name. So instead of the (lets face it) rather poor 'Books and Tea and Bumblebees', we have 'Poets Love Bees' which I find infinitely more enjoyable. I've been reading a lot of poetry lately and poets really do seem to love bees. Just the other day I picked up Carol Ann Duffy's collection of poems called 'The Bees', which has a gorgeous cover and many poems on her fascination with the insects! I guess I found it interesting, knowing that Sylvia Plath found beekeeping therapeutic too. One of my favourites, Keats's 'To Autumn', talks about bees too. When you stop and think about it, they are a most satisfyingly industrious creature. Anyway, so that is the intelligible ramblings of my mind which facilitated the change.

On an unrelated note, I am quite ashamed of my lack of posts when I started out so eager to write and share when I made this blog! Semester two is hurtling to a close now and so for the next couple of weeks I should have ample opportunity for blogging. I'm going to set myself some new challenges, which hopefully can keep my depression and anxiety at bay:

• Learning to play guitar. 
• Honing my cooking skills. (I have both Vintage Tea Party cookbooks which are just divine but I have yet to attempt any of their creations!)
• Catching up on my goal to read 100 books this year. (only 10 so far...eep!)
• Crafting again. I lament how little time there is to be creative at University, whereas when I'm at home I'm forever sewing or knitting something.
• And, if the Great British weather decides to buck it's ideas up deliver our Spring, then perhaps a spot of gardening too!

Jasmine x