[Maugham is] a great artist . . . a genius.” –Theodore Dreiser
“[Maugham’s] excessively rare gift of story-telling . . . is almost the equal of imagination itself.” –The Sunday Times (London)
“It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. . . . He was always so entirely there.” –Gore Vidal
“Maugham remains the consummate craftsman. . . . [His writing is] so compact, so economical, so closely motivated, so skillfully written, that it rivets attention from the first page to last.” –Saturday Review of Literature
I don’t think I’m alone when I say it was hard for me to get even 20 minutes of sleep on Christmas Eve. We can all remember lying there, our ears perked for the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof, our guts twisted in excitement for all the loot we would open in mere […]