The sly cutting comments that Ashenden makes about Kear and his success made me laugh out loud. Instead Rosie outlives everyone and is entirely contented with herself.What I loved about this book was its satirical portrayal of class and the literary scene.

The stock character of 'the whore with a heart of gold' was supposed to realize her unworthiness and sacrifice herself for the hero. These were brief and concurrent with his longstanding relationships with men: Maugham lived with his first partner for 30 years until his partner's death, and then with his second for the remaining 20 years of Maugham's life.However for his time (1930), Rosie was a remarkable and disturbing character because of her happy sexual appetite and the lack of authorial criticism for it. But I find that generally Maugham is less successful portraying men's attractions to women than to other men, and that may be because he was primarily gay with a few ambivalent (and I have to wonder if somewhat forced) relationships with women in his life. She is unremittingly sexual and cheerful. Now, after Driffield's death and being, himself, in middle-age, Ashenden has been approached by Alroy Kear to get the inside scoop on Driffield's life before his iconship was established.Alroy Kear is a best-selling author and sychophant, who, in cahoots with Driffield's second wife wants to produce an autobiography suitable to the elevated and refined status of an icon.I loved this book for its satirical take on the literary scene, which I found just as relevant in 2011 as in 1930: 'I read The Craft of Fiction by Mr Percy Lubbock, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Henry James after that I read Aspects of the Novel by Mr E M Forster, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Mr E M Forster then I read The Structure of the Novel by Mr Edwin Muir, from which I learned nothing at all.'The character of Rosie, Driffield's first wife, is a weakness of the novel, being rather flat. Later in life, Driffield rose to fame and acclaim and a second wife. At that time Driffield was a little known working class writer married to Rosie, an earthy sexually promiscuous woman. Written in 1930, this book is narrated by the midlist writer William Ashenden.As a young man in the 1890's, Ashenden knew the British literary icon, Edward Driffield (ostensibly based on Thomas Hardy, which Maugham denied).

Cakes and novel by w somerset maugham