W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil is easily the best book I've read all year, and it's probably actually the best book I've read in a very long time. I've put off writing about it as it's the sort of book which I feel I can't do justice, but I want to jot down a few thoughts at least, as books (even favored books) fade from memory so quickly it seems. The Painted Veil is the sort of story that I was captivated by while reading. Maugham writes the most exquisite prose, elegant yet simple, and imbued with so much meaning. This is a story of love and infidelity and betrayal, the search for meaning in life and perhaps for redemption, though these lessons are hard learned. It's a story about a woman's spiritual and maybe even moral (is there such a thing?) awakening.
Kitty Garstin is the more beautiful of two sisters who live in London in the 1920s with their parents. All the attention is on Kitty who is expected to break hearts and make a very good marriage. Several Seasons in, however, she hasn't yet achieved her goal, and when her younger sister announces her engagement to an eminently suitable young man Kitty can't bear to be her bridesmaid. Rather than become a spinster she agrees to marry a doctor who is on leave from a government job in Hong Kong. Walter Fane is enamored of Kitty, but the two couldn't be more different and ill-suited for each other. Kitty, very much the socialite, is shallow and self-centered and Walter, shy and serious, is very bookish in nature.
After a speedy betrothal so she can avoid her younger sister's wedding entirely, Kitty and Walter travel to Hong Kong where he returns to his job as a bacteriologist. Although Hong Kong has a lively social scene, as the wife of a very junior and unimportant government employee, Walter has very little clout amongst those of any real importance in Society. As loving and attentive Walter is towards Kitty, she finds him a bore, so it comes as no surprise when she embarks on an affair with Charlie Townsend, a colonial official who happens to be married with children. Charlie is handsome and charming and sexually alluring. He's also ambitious and desires to climb the political ladder in the colony. Kitty's ready to give everything up for him as she realizes she doesn't and never has loved Walter.
When Walter confronts Kitty about the affair he gives her the option of either going with him to the Chinese interior where a cholera epidemic is raging and he hopes to treat the people, or to marry Charlie who must immediately divorce his wife. She admits to Walter she's in love with Charlie and believes he'll marry her but discovers she, a betrayer, has also been betrayed. Charlie is as vain and self-centered as she and talks her into going with Walter to Mai-tan-fu rather than stirring up trouble. There are very few westerners in the region and the villagers are astonished that someone who appears so fragile as does Kitty would be allowed to travel to such a ravaged area. Mei-tan-fu will test both Kitty and Walter--how deep their love, or, hate goes and what their capacity for forgiveness and remorse.
The inspiration for this story came from Maugham's time in Italy where he was vacationing and was struck by something Dante wrote. "Siena made me, Maremma unmade me: this he knows who after betrothal espoused me with his ring." Maugham's Italian teacher passed along her own interpretation for the lines--a story of a gentlewoman who had been suspected of adultery by her husband. He exposed her to noxious vapors in his castle in the Maremma for revenge. Apparently this is Maugham's only novel begun with a story in mind rather than a character. The title comes from a sonnet by Shelley: "Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life." It seems apt for a story about the attainment of wisdom.
This is a gorgeous book, but don't expect the characters to be studies in black and white or even always likable. Life is rarely so easy and neither are people so easily readable. Certainly not Kitty or Walter. Yet despite their shortcomings, particularly Kitty's, it's hard not to feel sympathetic towards them. It's for moments like this that I love to read, and while there are always things to like about all stories, there are a few that reach down deep inside the very fiber of your being and convey some truth of living to the reader. It's with equal hesitation and anticipation that I look forward to reading another book by W. Somerset Maugham.