Painted Veil - a short but fascinating read

Well, this month's reading was a doddle compared to the hundreds of pages I read for the previous month's book. I had been to see the film The Painted Veil with Lorraine, and it was fascinating to see the difference. Essentially, they are similar in that Walter takes his revenge on Kitty for her infidelity, by taking her to a cholera striken Chinese village. But what was most interesting about the book was that it focussed on Kitty's internal life, her thoughts, feelings and spiritual ponderings. The film shows Kitty falling in love with Walter, with a suitably steamy love scene. This is not the case in the book, there is no falling into each other's arms...in fact, we can only hope that Walter forgave Kitty and himself, in his last moments.

The film shows something of the relationship between Kitty and her parents, but the book's depiction of this is quite heartbreaking. There is pretty much no love between Kitty and her mother. And the final scene between Kitty and her father, well, it's just so sad when she sees her father struggle to be free of family duty.

I had never read anything by Somerset Maugham, and I thought he was brilliant. I'll have to have a look in the library for some of his other novels.