Maugham as an author is impeccable. His characters are alive, passionate and human. This book was a fantastic voyage, and one of those books which are better than food. You pick this book, read it and feel your insides change by the time you finish it. Fantastic. ( )

Wonderful character development with thought provoking themes. ( )

Amazing characters, as usual. ( )

"The best to be said for it is that when you've come to the conclusion that something is inevitable all you can do is to make the best of it."

I got this lovely book as a present at the end of last year and for the past three weeks or so I have been reading it slowly so as to savour the great story.

Laurence Darrell known for the better part of the book as Larry is an American war veteran who after the death of a friend during the war is stirred with questions of life, existence and meaning, which leads him to France, Germany and later India on a quest of answers to his questions. This is among the books I've read that I wished I'd read sooner. The first Maugham book to have read, I think it's a great introduction to a fantastic storyteller.

Throughout the book, Maugham seamlessly takes us through time and uses points of view from different very well written characters to tell the story. Not only does this book tackle questions of life, meaning, love, class, Maugham also writes of failure and reinvention and loss and tragedy, a book that I already miss just some mere minutes after reading. ( )

great. “distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world’s confusion, so wishful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful, and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States” ( )

Read this as a shared read this month. It was a reread for me, I first read it sometime in my college years. My memory is that its was the first "literature" that I read without being told I had to read it. I liked it then, but I had no memory of reading it, as I read it now. Maugham is the narrator and he is describing the lives of his friends right after WWI, their family struggles, their financial struggles during the Great Depression. A lot of it is focused on Larry and his disillusionment with life and his search for meaning. A large section is Maugham's conversation with Larry about his time in India with Buddhist monks and his spiritual awakening. Its interesting, it seems that this section is the whole reason and point of the book (otherwise its just "Friends" in the Roaring 20's :) ), but Maugham makes a point that the reader can skip this whole section if they wanted to. I enjoyed this read quite a lot and I'm glad the group picked it as a group read.

Quotes:
"You make me tired. Do you think I sacrificed myself to let Larry fall into the hands of a raging nymphomaniac?" "How did you sacrifice yourself?" "I gave Larry up for the one and only reason that I didn't want to stand in his way." "Come off it, Isabel. You gave him up for a square-cut diamond and a sable coat."

One day I said to him: "You, who are so liberal, who know the world, who've read so much, science, philosophy, literature - do you in your heart of hearts believe in reincarnation?" His whole face changed. It became the face of a visionary. "My dear friend," he said, "if I didn't believe in it life would have no meaning for me.", "And do you believe in it, Larry?" I asked. "that's a very difficult question to answer. I don't think its possible for us Occidentals to believe in it as implicitly as these Orientals do. It's in their blood and bones. With us it can only be an opinion. I neither believe in it nor disbelieve in it." ( )

The Razor's Edge is a 1944 novel by W. Somerset Maugham and is considered to be the most accessible of his books. It tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in World War I along some of the people who had an impact on Larry’s life, including his fiancee Isabel and her uncle Elliot, a snobbish expat American who cannot imagine any other way of life but that of following European high society.

Larry sets off in search of a transcendent meaning to life and although he invites Isabel to join him, she, needing to choose between her love of Larry or her need for a life of wealth and privilege, breaks off their engagement. One unique feature of the story is that it is narrated by a character who happens to be the author, W. Somerset Maugham. Larry Darrell spends the book travelling and searching for life’s meaning and intermittently passing his observations on to Maugham who then interprets these concepts of war, death, life, marriage, and profession onto the pages.

I found The Razor’s Edge an interesting read. It’s philosophical theme of finding one’s true purpose in order to live a meaningful life certainly made this reader reflective. Of course it is obvious that one has to find out for himself what the meaning of life is as it is different for everyone. I believe that by exposing his characters inner desires, whether it be stability, spirituality or simply working and caring for others that Maugham was trying to point out that the way to peace and happiness is one’s ability to accept and respect other people’s choices. ( )

I read this in Italy some years back. I don't remember anything about it, but I think I liked it. And Larry Darrell is an unintentionally hilarious name. ( )

I found this book tremendously enjoyable. My prior impression of Somerset Maugham was that he was a good short story writer whose novels are looked down upon for being a bit plot-driven and a bit stylistically simple. I was thrilled to discover that neither of those (imagined?) criticisms is valid. I think Maugham is very good at all elements of the novel, without being excellent at any of them. The characterisation is mostly good, and when it leans a little bit toward cliche it's in a way that's still sympathetic. The prose is crystal clear, with just enough authorial voice to engage the reader. A lot happens in the book, but none of it is unrealistic and much of it is illustrative rather than integral to the story.

It helps that this book falls into just about my favourite genre of art, which doesn't so much ask the big questions as ask what would happen if we took the big questions seriously. The Good Place and I Heart Huckabees are two examples of this genre from other media, while books like [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|386162|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)|Douglas Adams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559986152l/386162._SX50_.jpg|3078186] series play with the same ideas.

This is a tricky book to recommend, because I expect going into it with low expectations and no idea what it's about will greatly enhance the experience. Nevertheless, if you're considering reading it, do. ( )

A bunch of people who know I'm a reader recommended this book to me. "It's amazing, a must read, wow!" It was okay. I don't get all the fuss, guess it just wasn't my style. Guess I'm more of a Larry Darrell, while the author and proposed audience was supposed to be more of an Elliot Templeton? (And that reference only works if you've also read the book) Maybe it's also that a lot of the book was centered around religion that kind of turned me off, but I read "The Shack" and really enjoyed that, so that couldn't be it. I guess it had to do with a lot of the characters snobbish qualities that irked me a lot, which, while a sign of the times (aka the settings and year, the book was written in) I found rather bothersome. All in all it was well written and had some rather enjoyable qualities, but not one I intend to ever pick up and read again. ( )

I don't think that I've ever read a book where the author of the book is also the narrator in a work of fiction. Maugham does this well even though he keeps things moving along chronologically with occasional hints that he will need to fill the reader in on something further into the story. This technique also allows for some moments of humorous self-deprecation. Overall, I enjoyed the book - even the philosophical parts which were nicely spaced throughout the story. The consequences of people's choices in life always make for good reading and this is a wonderful example of how well it can be done. ( )

An excellent classic. Great character development and an interesting story. ( )

This is a book filled with keen observations on human nature. The author inserts himself into the story as a friend and confidant to a group of upper‑class Americans in Chicago and then Europe during the period after the first world war. The friends' personalities range from the near-narcissistically self‑absorbed to one seeking to ‘sink his separate self and become one with the universal self’. As characters they are all fully realized - endearing, intriguing, and sometimes frustrating in their own way. I never got the feeling that the author meant for them to be judged or looked down on, just seen as living, breathing individuals, warts and all, each searching for a sense of fulfillment. ( )

I enjoyed this very much, but I think at the end of the day it's superficial and a bit spiritually hollow. ( )

Oh, Mr. Maugham, there are moments when I love you so much I could burst. Moments when I wish there were a six star rating, so I could put it into your hands and say "I got that part and it resonated with me." Moments when I want to say, "enough of that, get back to the story", only to find That is the story, That is the heart.

This novel made me wish to live in the post WWI twenties and have endless possibilities open to me. It made me examine the life I have lived and wonder if I couldn't have gotten more out of it if I had been bolder or less worried.

It's strange how many people suffer from it (fear). I don't mean fear of closed spaces and fear of heights, but fear of death and, what's worse, fear of life. Often they're people who seem in the best of health, prosperous, without any worry, and yet they're tortured by it. I've sometimes thought it was the most besetting humour of men, and I asked myself at one time if it was due to some deep animal instinct that man has inherited from that primeval something that first felt the thrill of life.

How any things have I not done in life because I was afraid to try them? More than a few I can remember. Here at the end, I wish I had been braver, bolder and, yes, a little crazier.

This is surely amongst the best, if not the best, of Maugham's works I have found so far. By inserting himself into the novel, he makes it seem so vital and real, and even while understanding it as a contrivance, it lends these characters heft and weight and importance. For each of them, life is about choices and one has to question which of these characters is the most fulfilled. In the end we are told they all got what they wanted, but did they? Eliot wants to be very important, but is he? Does anyone truly want death? Should we choose security over adventure and love? Is a higher truth worth striving for? Can a man ever identify and know God?

The Maugham who is a character in this book is only an observer, no wiser than the others, unable to give us the answers and willing to accept the failures. The Maugham who wrote this book is wise and savvy and enlightened. He knows. This book is like an onion. I kept peeling it back to find another layer, and another layer, and a layer deeper even than that.

Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else, and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment. What d'you suppose Keats meant when he told the lover on his Grecian urn not to grieve? 'Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!' Why? Because she was unattainable, and however madly the lover pursued she still eluded him.

Perhaps true knowledge is as unattainable as love, always more to know, always another place to seek in, always a little out of our reach. In the hands of God, who might reveal it to us at the moment of our deaths or might send us back to strive again and again until we have gotten it right. ( )

Amazing. ( )

I read this one when I was a teenager. I didn't feel that I'd quite grasped what was going on, but certain parts of the book stuck with me anyway. Rereading it now, I can see why: Maugham has an almost preternatural ability to sketch realistic, memorable characters. There's hardly a line about Larry, Gray, Isobel and Sophie that doesn't hit its mark. They are, in the final telling, the only real reason to read this book. Maugham spends a lot of time on Larry's spiritual quest, and, -- much like Aldous Huxley in "Eyeless in Gaza" -- ends up with a kind of Westernized version of Eastern religions. This will likely be of limited interest to modern readers, but Larry's spiritual yearnings are real enough.

I found other aspects of the book more interesting. "The Razor's Edge" could be described as a Lost Generation novel: Larry is, after all, a veteran of he First World War, most of the characters in the book suffered some setbacks in the Great Depression. It's also an Englishman's attempt to grapple with the United States, then a country that felt young, confident, and very much on the rise. Though Maugham skillfully inserts himself into the narrative, I also felt that there might have been a lot of him in Eliot Templeton, the charming, cultured, and somewhat superficial character that helps bring these characters together. The foursome that make up the core of this novel are not nearly as cultured or as expensively educated as either Eliot or the narrator is -- but the novel forgives them easily. Larry is clearly a deeper, more complicated individual, but Maugham neither begrudges these young Americans their love of nice things or good times, nor does criticize them for their rather conventional goals. The novel takes them very much as they are, and makes them much more memorable by doing so.

For all of the money and high culture on display, "The Razor's Edge" also has a pleasantly seedy edge to it at times. We spend some time in Parisian dives, artist's cafés, and speakeasies. We meet a sympathetic artists' model and a varied cast of toughs and operators. Characters drink and smoke rather a lot and discuss sex and pleasure unblushingly. Readers who enjoy stories that describe the outlaw nightlife of interwar Europe will likely eat these scenes up. The narrator himself comes off as something of an Ian Flemming type, a writer of genre fiction who is well-acquainted with the underworld he writes about and could easily be a minor character in one of his own books. His frank assessments and dry demeanor provide a wonderful and necessary leavener to both Larry's account of his spiritual pilgrimage and Eliot's dandified lifestyle. Apparently they tried to make a movie out of this in the eighties involving, of all people, Bill Murray. It didn't work, and I can hardly say that I'm surprised. In fact, I'm rather surprised that someone even tried to film this one "The Razor's Edge" is best when it focuses on its characters; the rest is mostly talk. "The Razor's Edge" is still worth reading, though. ( )

Here's what I wrote after reading in 1987: "As all of the descriptions say, the story of on young American's search for spiritual purity and understanding. Larry begins his search as a means to understand the very real existance of evil in the world. One monk tells Larry, "you are a deeply religious man who doesn't believe in God." For such a serious topic, the book is very entertaining and set against diverse and interesting backdrops: Paris, India, the Riviera. Good story, good topic, worthwhile reading!" Important note about Larry: He's a WWI veteran searching following the trauma; not sure I fully appreciated this aspect of the novel upon first reading
" ( )

found this book to be an improvement on the other one by Maugham I've just reviewed, Of Human Bondage.

What I disliked about the book were the characters, the upper class society to which they belonged, and the apparently meaningless lives they led.

It was only when looking through the book for purposes of review that I saw that the author had based the book on real people, and it was only towards the end that I realized that the I character in the book, though I knew he was a writer, was in fact Somerset Maugham himself (this was because I hadn’t been reading the book carefully enough.)

I don’t know whether Maugham used the real names of the characters or not, hopefully not.

One of the main character is Elliott, who “took no interest in people apart from their social position”.

He is generous, helpful and obliging, but his sole interest is holding and being invited to, parties/social gatherings. People call him “a filthy snob”.

There is also Elliott’s sister and her daughter Isabel, soon to be married to Gray. Isabel is young and good-looking but seems to me to be superficial. And there is Larry, once engaged to the latter; he is an appealing but unppredictable man. He’s always doing a disappearing act, and never tells anyone where he’s living. He says his main intention is to "loaf”.

As far as I can see, they all live in Paris.

Many of the characters are described as having red faces and being overweight. I keep thinking that they must have unhealthy life-styles with all their partying and so on.

Gray in particular is a large, overweight man. He has migraines but at one point is miraculously healed of them by Larry.

Elliott does seem to redeem himself towards the end of the book by gaining insight into the error of his ways.

I found the latter part of the book much more interesting than the first part, which had mostly to do with the revelations about Larry’s visit to India and his ensuing spiritual development.

I actually found the book quite readable despite my initial prejudice regarding Maugham’s writing and the superficiality of the society he frequents and portrays. ( )

This book was mandatory reading when I was in high school and it went right over my head then so I felt another read would be good. Now, having a good understanding of the spiritual concepts touched on in this story, I identified with Larry easily.
But, as much I like S. Maugham‘s powers of observation and dry wit, I was disappointed by this book. And by the ending. It felt shallow and flat somehow. I was expecting a stronger ending - something that would generate an emotional response. All I felt when I finished this book was that I wasted my time reading about people most of whom I didn’t like or care about. ( )

Sordid and inconsequential. This book struggles to keep the reader from indifference, due to large sections of it being irrelevant and mired in stereotypes. ( )

An intriguing tale about the disillusionments of a group of intimate acquaintances who really do not know each other at all. Maugham inserts himself as a sort of character/narrator of the story, and we find out about the protagonist, Larry, through him. The love story reminds me a bit of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot, and I wonder if there is some connection there. ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13253407

First, a word about this edition. I suspect that this was printed by a small company - maybe it's a one-person company - that prints books out of copyright. There are signs within the text itself that suggest that another book was scanned and then arranged in a new format with a different font. What I noticed were a couple of words that are easily misinterpreted by scanners because of the way the letters look, and some hyphenated words where the hyphen is in the middle of the line. That is, words that are only hyphenated when they are split between two lines of text.

Then there is this odd classification. This publisher offers "success classics", "prosperity classics", "spiritual classics" and "political classics". All "classics" because they've been out of print so long.

I knew nothing about The Razor's Edge when I bought it. Heard of it for years but never knew what it was about.

Maugham tells the story in the first person, using his real name. So we might wonder if some or all of it is true. I don't know what his purpose was in choosing this method. But I would never suspect any of it is true, in spite of the fact that in chapter one he says "I have invented nothing".

Maugham meets Larry Darrell in 1919, in Chicago. Larry is a veteran of WWI ("The Great War"), a pilot who enlisted when he was underage. What he encountered in the war caused him to see the world differently than he had before. While still in love with Isabel, a woman who would probably have been called a young socialite, he no longer shared her values. Neither realized just how far apart they were, though, so when Larry impetuously says he's headed for Germany for a year or two or more, Isabel says she will wait for him.

When they meet again their differences are more noticeable. Isabel has to make a choice between Larry, whom she still loves deeply, and another man who will give her a good life, a life she can understand.

So what is going on? Larry is on a mission. He is looking for another way to live. He eventually goes to India and is much taken by a form of Buddhism. He lives for a while with a mentor who teaches him how to live less materially, more spiritually.

So that's the bones of the story. It reminded me, I have to say with horror, of Ayn Rand's so-called novels. Rand preached "Objectivism" through her books, and rather with a heavy hand. Her characters were far from subtly drawn, with the evil do-gooders clashing with the selfish supermen. The supermen were the heroes. Maugham's characters are more nuanced and none are all good or all bad, but there was the same sense that they were forced into certain actions to suit Maugham's perception of their different ways of life. Thus near the end he mourns his longtime friend Elliott Templeton because Templeton had worshiped social standing at the expense of all else, even his health. Maugham says Templeton's life was useless. But was it? He was a kind man who did much for others. That may not be as lofty as giving yourself to a selfless existence but it is not useless. I felt he dealt with other characters in a similar way, with some care but overall a kind of disgust.

It's a good book for discussion. ( )

Quotable:
"Have you never thought of divorcing Gray?"
"I've got no reason for divorcing him."
"That doesn't prevent your countrywomen from divorcing their husbands when they have a mind to."
She laughed.
"Why do you suppose they do it?"
"Don't you know? Because American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers." ( )

This book stays with you, whispering, "Are you searching for meaning in life?" It remains in a special place in my library.

The cover page sets the stage with this quote: “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.” — Katha-Upanishad. ( )