cover image Willie, the Life of W. Somerset Maugham

Willie, the Life of W. Somerset Maugham

Robert Calder. St. Martin's Press, $22.95 (429pp) ISBN 978-0-312-03954-7

Differing from Ted Morgan's antipathetic Maugham (1980), this thorough, scholarly biography--written, unlike earlier books, with the cooperation of Maugham's secretary Alan Searle--sympathetically explores Maugham's homosexuality and its effect on his writing. Emphasizing the prolific writer's ``sensitivity, wit, loyalty and numerous kindnesses,'' Calder, a professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan, explores Maugham's relationships with his wife Syrie and male companions. The biographer skillfully relates the life of ``a man without roots,'' who was ``fundamentally itinerant and detached,'' to his work as novelist, playwright and short story writer. The later chapters, in which the ``grand old man'' was burdened by his memories, lack the interest of the earlier ones. Photos. (Jan.)