‘Christmas Holiday’ by W. Somerset Maugham

In this instant it is probably best not to take the title too literally, for W. Somerset Maugham's Christmas Holiday has relatively little to do with the season throughout which one is supposed to be jolly. In fact, I would say that the book's festive title is rather touchingly ironic.

This novel, W. Somerset Maugham's fifteenth, tells the story of a twenty-three-year-old Cambridge graduate named Charley Mason who travels to Paris to visit an old journalist friend, aiming to have a whale of a time in the process. On his first night in the city he meets Lydia, a Russian prostitute whose tragic past reveals to him a disturbing and hitherto hidden side of life in the French capital.

As one of Maugham's later works, Christmas Holiday is also one of his lesser known. In terms of length it is but a fraction of the size of his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage, and nor is the title as immediately memorable as that of The Painted Veil. I was attracted to this particular novel as I had heard about its wonderful evocation of Paris prior to the Second World War, and in this regard I was only a touch disappointed.

This is not a bad novel - it is well written and even charming at times, particularly in its allusions to some of the world's most fabulous art, and yet it fails to reel you in the way many novels of the period do. There are some phrases that resonated deeply with me, those I have made note of, but overall it is a rather lacklustre affair, especially when compared with much of Maugham's earlier work.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in December 2011.