Cakes and Ale, W. Somerset Maugham
Cakes and Ale, W. Somerset Maugham
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Cakes and Ale
or The Skeleton in the Cupboard

Author: W. Somerset Maugham

Narrator: Neil Hunt

Unabridged: 6 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 11/25/2011

Synopsis

Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield’s wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist’s voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrassing shadow over his career and respectable image. Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best. "[Maugham] is a master for creating the appetite for information, of withholding it until the right moment, and then providing it surprisingly."—Evelyn Waugh

About W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s. His semiautobiographical Of Human Bondage is considered to be his masterpiece. Other notable works by Maugham include The Moon and Sixpence, The Razor's Edge, Cakes and Ale, and The Gentleman in the Parlour.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on September 07, 2019

Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale (“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?”--Twelfth Night) takes for its theme the doubleness of human character, ranging from the calculated hypocrisy of the “virtuous” (exemplified by literary opportunist and would-be biograp......more

Goodreads review by Paul on March 22, 2025

Our narrator at age 15 falls off his bike. Commenting on the guy who’s teaching him to ride he says : It was very hard under such circumstances to preserve the standoffishness befitting the vicar’s nephew with the son of Miss Wolfe’s bailiff He is an appalling entitled supercilious snob who says stuff......more

Goodreads review by Nigeyb on October 16, 2023

Cakes and Ale (1930) is a multi-layered novel that was apparently Maugham's favourite, and understandably so as it's a delight from start to finish. A satire about the then contemporary literary trends but also, in a counter narrative, a study of personal freedom. Both narratives converge upon a rec......more

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