The Merry-go-round

Enjoyed this ride on the Merry-Go-Round of London upper Middle Class society, at the turn of the century, as we peek into the lives of several romantic pairings struggling proudly with their mismatches in Class, and their constant battles between their hearts and passions and what everyone else in society sees as their 'duty'. And what a whirling mess it becomes here and there. Our vantage point connection to all this is the sharp-witted, very human, but connected Miss Ley, who unexpectedly finds herself as an older spinster, heir to a fortune and a place in society she is not even sure she wants. But all want her blessings and advice, and she is seemingly the only sane one in the bunch. Morality, honor and duty interfere with all of show more the goings on, and Maugham strikingly points out in several situations that 'doing the right thing' only made things worse, creating the conundrum that is living our lives; trying desperately to be happy, while not hurting anyone else in the meantime.....oh, if we could all have a Miss Ley in our lives to turn to....to clear away the fog of indecision and help us move forward. The outcomes of these various relationships vary greatly, but it is uncanny how 120 years later, really very little has changed.....it is the same story...just with a different set and different clothing...but it still goes round and round.... show less

[Preface to Liza of Lambeth, Heinemann, The Collected Edition, 1934:]

Then I wrote a novel called The Merry-go-round. I am not reprinting it, but I look upon it, nevertheless, with indulgence. It was a failure, but the experiment was interesting and I have sometimes thought that it would be worth repeating. It had struck me for some time that the novelist's usual practice of taking two or three persons and treating them as though the world moved round them, bringing in others only in so far as the protagonists were concerned with them, gave a very false impression of the multifariousness of life. I am not alone in the world with the girl I love and the rival who is disturbing the course of my passion. All sorts of thrilling adventures show more are occurring to the people all round me, and to them they are just as important as mine are to me. But the novelist writes as though his hero and heroine dwelt in a vacuum. I thought I could give a much fuller effect of life by taking a number of people, loosely connected as people are who live in the same world, and giving all their stories with equal fullness, and telling all I knew about all of them. I chose the necessary number of persons and devised four series of events that occurred simultaneously. I saw my novel like one of those huge frescoes in an Italian cloister in which all manner of people are engaged in all manner of activities, but which the eye embraces in a single look. The scheme was too ambitious for my powers. I had not realised that one set of characters would prove more interesting than the rest and that the reader, wanting to know about them, would be impatient of the others. The book suffered also from the pernicious influence on me at the time of the writings of the aesthetes. The men were inanely handsome and the women peerlessly lovely. I wrote with affectation. My attitude was precious. I was afraid to let myself go. But still I think there was something in the idea. Perhaps it could be carried out successfully if the intertwined stories and the persons who acted them were seen rigidly through the eyes of one of the characters in the book. The interest of this character in the various events he was concerned in might give them unity, and the dramatic value of his reactions towards the other persons of the novel hold the reader's attention by giving him the illusion of a single theme. show less

This novel falls right in the vein of first books by excellent authors - which is to say that it is merely alright. It is neat to see discussed the themes which he later developed, and all the more so from the unpolished perspective of a young man.

There was something of the quality of a train-wreck to this novel, not in the quality of the writing or plot, but in the story itself. The characters are sordid, mean, stupid, proud, and all the rest, but it is the message of this book that we all are, and that to hope or pretend otherwise is silly at best, though more often harmful.

I'm glad I read it, and it makes me want to read more of Maughm's work, but I will not read it again.

Don't buy this edition. It is under 50 pages long and is a public domain copy of a restored book. Keep looking. There's a $20+ paperback that has all 400+ pages in it. I'm not sure what the point was to publish such a damaged reproduction of Maugham's novel.