Reading Roundup, October 2025
Nov. 2nd, 2025 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoI wiped myself out this month with mostly one book, and my goal for next month is to be gentler: shorter works and less reading overall, especially given that I'll be seeing family twice. November and December are always my slowest reading months due to the holidays, work deadlines, and so on, and this year I'm going to try and embrace that by lowering my goals.
The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys - Forrest Reid
A rarity: a queer early 20th century novella with zero fandom awareness, that is, zero hits on FFA. This follows Graham, who is in the present a middle-aged man, as he reminisces about a tragic boyhood friendship with Harold Brocklehurst. Harold is a Pan-ic figure, which is explicitly stated in the text but all of the nature references would also get you there. His near-mystical appearance in Graham’s life lasts less than a year, but is haunted throughout by a half-remembered dream. When Harold meets his tragic, it’s in a similarly dreamlike chapter.
So what happens in-between? The reason you might read this novella: the most blatantly homosexual writing you’re going to find in 1906—writing so explicit that Henry James, to whom this was dedicated, disavowed the author after its publication. Highlights include gratuitous use of ‘queer’ to describe the boys, references to classic gay literature including Renault-favorite Phaedrus, Graham replacing the pronouns in love poetry so that they match his feelings for Harold, calling Harold the “messenger of Eros,” two (2) kisses, bed-sharing, and more.
This novella is too short to do more than develop the relationship between Graham and Harold, and either you will like the Pan theme or it’ll do nothing for you. I wouldn’t call this the old book to change one’s mind on old books. But it’s short and incredibly gay, and it was an interesting read to see a rare example of open queerness—well, perhaps not technically open, but as near enough as one could ask.
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
After Cakes and Ale earlier this year, I thought I should read more of Maugham, and this book came along to me in a free library. It’s Maugham’s most famous work, and very chunky—around 260k words—which is outside of my normal wheelhouse for solo reading, but I thought that such a long book would be a good occupation during my temporary relocation. It certainly filled the last month! Whether that was the ideal choice is harder to say.
Of Human Bondage is a semi-autobiographical novel in which Maugham draws on a good deal of his own life to create the character of Philip Carey. Philip is given a thematically-significant disability, a club foot, which afflicts him both physically and mentally. Wikipedia cites analysis of this as a metaphor for Maugham’s own lisp, or his homosexuality, and either or both are interesting lenses through which to read Philip’s disability, though I’d say it also holds up well for its own sake. But this, to start, is what will guide us through the novel: Philip has a club foot, and he struggles with his image of himself as a result.
The book is structurally a bildungsroman, taking us from Philip aged 9 through to Philip aged 30 and all of his trials along the way. They fall into three major categories, which overlap and intersect throughout: his relationships with family and friends, his romances with women, and his experiences of education and employment. I’ll say up front that I think items one and three are the most compelling; the way that the book handles romance, or at least one of the romances, was alternately so stressful and frustrating that it ultimately tipped my opinion of the book into dislike. But let’s go through them each.
Relationships with Family and Friends
This is where any slashiness in the novel lies, and also where most of the interesting secondary characters appear. Philip’s club foot sets him apart from everyone else: he never has a significant relationship with another physically-disabled person, something which he is keenly aware of. His boyhood schoolfellows often mock him for his disability, and he takes from this the lesson that everyone he ever knows will throw this at him when they’re mad—which he’s mostly not wrong about! Now, I would argue that he should take the lesson that anyone who uses his disability as a weapon to verbally insult him with is not someone he should keep in his life, but, well… that’s the rub, really—we learn early that Philip is burdened by self-hatred, and seeing his distrust of affection from family, and his abuse at the hands of childhood friends, begins the pattern. He’s routinely unable to identify his own feelings in these relationships and relies instead on how much a person impresses or disgusts him to determine whether he should try to stay close with someone, which creates unstable push-pull dynamics that set him reeling off into ever more uncertain choices. It’s difficult to watch, but compelling, and a few of these (Aunt Louisa, Hayward, Cronshaw) form memorable and rewarding (though also sad!) arcs through Philip’s life.
Romances with Women
I’m sandwiching the worst in the middle of the two things I liked. Philip is disastrous with women, and even his ultimate success and promise of marriage is a pale shadow of romance, marred by a crisis of doubt. But rather than discuss each of the women, I’ll fix on the trend and the most significant of them. The trend is this: Philip’s romances each involve an uneven level of admiration between the parties, and each one involves a woman upset over his inability to love her fully. His paramours become obsessed with him to the point of rage and even suicide, and nearly all abuse him as a result. It strains belief, honestly. This is where the novel sometimes tips into Victorian melodrama. And though it never paints Philip as perfect or blameless, and the women do merit narrative sympathy, it still seems to delight a bit much (for my tastes) in Philip’s suffering and being wronged at the hand of most of these characters.
Mildred Rogers is the epitome of this, and I’d guess that a person’s opinion of the book rests heavily on how well they connect with how the story uses Mildred. Mildred is horrible: she’s vain, shallow, and unaffectionate, but allows Philip to spend his money on her despite her romantic dislike of him. When circumstances in her life turn poor (after a failed romance, after financial strain), she returns to Philip, or accepts his charity, but always without understanding him, and these misunderstandings spiral until she’s left him in penury and destroyed all of his possessions. To balance this, Philip is also horrible to her: initially, he’s the one more obsessed, and his anger at her inability to love him or to want a sexual relationship with him leads to violent flights of fancy. He thinks about hitting or choking her, at various points, despite not having a violent nature otherwise. And though he never abuses Mildred, his inability to move on from her makes her uncomfortable—both are clearly unhappy with the arrangement, but her financial needs and desires, and his need for approval and affection from her, create an inescapable toxicity.
I’ve seen the comment that Mildred represents Philips’ self-hatred, or otherwise stands in for a mental illness like depression, and that makes sense. I struggled to read a lot of their later chapters together, when Philip was spending hundreds of pounds on her whims despite knowing that he couldn’t afford to spend that money, and I felt that the harrowing emotion of those parts was vividly written. But Mildred is, also, a character on the page, and one must unfortunately read her beyond the symbolic. If I could make a change to the book, it would be to cut at least 100k words of Philip going back and forth in his relationship with Mildred.
Experiences of Education and Employment
Philip is a rudderless young man. We see him: leave school without sitting for university entrance exams, learn German in Heidelberg, abortively apprentice as an accountant, study art in Paris, study medicine in London, work off his penury as a shop-walker at a draper’s, and finally finish his medical education. To be fair, there’s enough book in which to fit all of that. It’s an interesting cross-section of late Victorian life, and one which gives Maugham rein to showcase many of his own interests. He’s startlingly specific about art and artists, naming living figures and famous paintings in what is most certainly a case of giving one’s character their own passions, and it’s charming. Maugham writes with confidence and detail about each of Philip’s occupations. I enjoyed his perspectives on being an art student in Paris and a doctor trainee in London most especially, because in both of those settings Maugham gave us interesting sketches of the types of people that populate those settings. And although I absolutely struggled to watch Philip fuck up his finances while he was figuring out his life path, I don’t put that on the different career attempts themselves—one of the tragic parts of his story is that he could still have done all of these things without experiencing complete poverty if he’d never encountered Mildred. So it’s all around an interesting look at a middle-class man (with the entitlement of a gentleman) navigating the new financial realities of his generation, where working for a living is a given but advice for picking a vocation is limited and inaccurate among the older generation.
So, where this leaves me is that I appreciated much of this book: Maugham writes well, and arguably quite compellingly, but not without issues. And for me, the issues would be best resolved by cutting content, shortening sequences and resolving some arcs much sooner. But I recognize that those choices would negate what this book is, what makes it stand out so much in its era, and would change it fundamentally. For me, that means that I didn’t like Of Human Bondage, but I wouldn’t call it bad, just a book which definitely requires a reader to meet it on its own terms, versus one which works to persuade you that its terms are interesting and worth the effort.
The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys - Forrest Reid
A rarity: a queer early 20th century novella with zero fandom awareness, that is, zero hits on FFA. This follows Graham, who is in the present a middle-aged man, as he reminisces about a tragic boyhood friendship with Harold Brocklehurst. Harold is a Pan-ic figure, which is explicitly stated in the text but all of the nature references would also get you there. His near-mystical appearance in Graham’s life lasts less than a year, but is haunted throughout by a half-remembered dream. When Harold meets his tragic, it’s in a similarly dreamlike chapter.
So what happens in-between? The reason you might read this novella: the most blatantly homosexual writing you’re going to find in 1906—writing so explicit that Henry James, to whom this was dedicated, disavowed the author after its publication. Highlights include gratuitous use of ‘queer’ to describe the boys, references to classic gay literature including Renault-favorite Phaedrus, Graham replacing the pronouns in love poetry so that they match his feelings for Harold, calling Harold the “messenger of Eros,” two (2) kisses, bed-sharing, and more.
[H]e lay awake still, thinking of the afternoon that had just passed, and of the strange emotion it had swept into his life. He wondered how it could have come about, and he pondered old tales he had read—some of them long ago—tales of a pagan world, in which this wonderful passion of friendship, then so common, had played its part. Returning to him now, they wore a new and added beauty, a meaning he had only dreamed before, but which at present filled his mind with a kind of heavenly radiance. Might not his own friendship be just the same?... Might not it, too, be something more than a mere romantic reverie, than the shadow of a beautiful dream? He felt an exquisite happiness in giving way to his tenderness, in letting his imagination run on and on, like a swift, strong river, in an ever-changing dream of love.
This novella is too short to do more than develop the relationship between Graham and Harold, and either you will like the Pan theme or it’ll do nothing for you. I wouldn’t call this the old book to change one’s mind on old books. But it’s short and incredibly gay, and it was an interesting read to see a rare example of open queerness—well, perhaps not technically open, but as near enough as one could ask.
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
After Cakes and Ale earlier this year, I thought I should read more of Maugham, and this book came along to me in a free library. It’s Maugham’s most famous work, and very chunky—around 260k words—which is outside of my normal wheelhouse for solo reading, but I thought that such a long book would be a good occupation during my temporary relocation. It certainly filled the last month! Whether that was the ideal choice is harder to say.
Of Human Bondage is a semi-autobiographical novel in which Maugham draws on a good deal of his own life to create the character of Philip Carey. Philip is given a thematically-significant disability, a club foot, which afflicts him both physically and mentally. Wikipedia cites analysis of this as a metaphor for Maugham’s own lisp, or his homosexuality, and either or both are interesting lenses through which to read Philip’s disability, though I’d say it also holds up well for its own sake. But this, to start, is what will guide us through the novel: Philip has a club foot, and he struggles with his image of himself as a result.
The book is structurally a bildungsroman, taking us from Philip aged 9 through to Philip aged 30 and all of his trials along the way. They fall into three major categories, which overlap and intersect throughout: his relationships with family and friends, his romances with women, and his experiences of education and employment. I’ll say up front that I think items one and three are the most compelling; the way that the book handles romance, or at least one of the romances, was alternately so stressful and frustrating that it ultimately tipped my opinion of the book into dislike. But let’s go through them each.
Relationships with Family and Friends
This is where any slashiness in the novel lies, and also where most of the interesting secondary characters appear. Philip’s club foot sets him apart from everyone else: he never has a significant relationship with another physically-disabled person, something which he is keenly aware of. His boyhood schoolfellows often mock him for his disability, and he takes from this the lesson that everyone he ever knows will throw this at him when they’re mad—which he’s mostly not wrong about! Now, I would argue that he should take the lesson that anyone who uses his disability as a weapon to verbally insult him with is not someone he should keep in his life, but, well… that’s the rub, really—we learn early that Philip is burdened by self-hatred, and seeing his distrust of affection from family, and his abuse at the hands of childhood friends, begins the pattern. He’s routinely unable to identify his own feelings in these relationships and relies instead on how much a person impresses or disgusts him to determine whether he should try to stay close with someone, which creates unstable push-pull dynamics that set him reeling off into ever more uncertain choices. It’s difficult to watch, but compelling, and a few of these (Aunt Louisa, Hayward, Cronshaw) form memorable and rewarding (though also sad!) arcs through Philip’s life.
Romances with Women
I’m sandwiching the worst in the middle of the two things I liked. Philip is disastrous with women, and even his ultimate success and promise of marriage is a pale shadow of romance, marred by a crisis of doubt. But rather than discuss each of the women, I’ll fix on the trend and the most significant of them. The trend is this: Philip’s romances each involve an uneven level of admiration between the parties, and each one involves a woman upset over his inability to love her fully. His paramours become obsessed with him to the point of rage and even suicide, and nearly all abuse him as a result. It strains belief, honestly. This is where the novel sometimes tips into Victorian melodrama. And though it never paints Philip as perfect or blameless, and the women do merit narrative sympathy, it still seems to delight a bit much (for my tastes) in Philip’s suffering and being wronged at the hand of most of these characters.
Mildred Rogers is the epitome of this, and I’d guess that a person’s opinion of the book rests heavily on how well they connect with how the story uses Mildred. Mildred is horrible: she’s vain, shallow, and unaffectionate, but allows Philip to spend his money on her despite her romantic dislike of him. When circumstances in her life turn poor (after a failed romance, after financial strain), she returns to Philip, or accepts his charity, but always without understanding him, and these misunderstandings spiral until she’s left him in penury and destroyed all of his possessions. To balance this, Philip is also horrible to her: initially, he’s the one more obsessed, and his anger at her inability to love him or to want a sexual relationship with him leads to violent flights of fancy. He thinks about hitting or choking her, at various points, despite not having a violent nature otherwise. And though he never abuses Mildred, his inability to move on from her makes her uncomfortable—both are clearly unhappy with the arrangement, but her financial needs and desires, and his need for approval and affection from her, create an inescapable toxicity.
I’ve seen the comment that Mildred represents Philips’ self-hatred, or otherwise stands in for a mental illness like depression, and that makes sense. I struggled to read a lot of their later chapters together, when Philip was spending hundreds of pounds on her whims despite knowing that he couldn’t afford to spend that money, and I felt that the harrowing emotion of those parts was vividly written. But Mildred is, also, a character on the page, and one must unfortunately read her beyond the symbolic. If I could make a change to the book, it would be to cut at least 100k words of Philip going back and forth in his relationship with Mildred.
Experiences of Education and Employment
Philip is a rudderless young man. We see him: leave school without sitting for university entrance exams, learn German in Heidelberg, abortively apprentice as an accountant, study art in Paris, study medicine in London, work off his penury as a shop-walker at a draper’s, and finally finish his medical education. To be fair, there’s enough book in which to fit all of that. It’s an interesting cross-section of late Victorian life, and one which gives Maugham rein to showcase many of his own interests. He’s startlingly specific about art and artists, naming living figures and famous paintings in what is most certainly a case of giving one’s character their own passions, and it’s charming. Maugham writes with confidence and detail about each of Philip’s occupations. I enjoyed his perspectives on being an art student in Paris and a doctor trainee in London most especially, because in both of those settings Maugham gave us interesting sketches of the types of people that populate those settings. And although I absolutely struggled to watch Philip fuck up his finances while he was figuring out his life path, I don’t put that on the different career attempts themselves—one of the tragic parts of his story is that he could still have done all of these things without experiencing complete poverty if he’d never encountered Mildred. So it’s all around an interesting look at a middle-class man (with the entitlement of a gentleman) navigating the new financial realities of his generation, where working for a living is a given but advice for picking a vocation is limited and inaccurate among the older generation.
So, where this leaves me is that I appreciated much of this book: Maugham writes well, and arguably quite compellingly, but not without issues. And for me, the issues would be best resolved by cutting content, shortening sequences and resolving some arcs much sooner. But I recognize that those choices would negate what this book is, what makes it stand out so much in its era, and would change it fundamentally. For me, that means that I didn’t like Of Human Bondage, but I wouldn’t call it bad, just a book which definitely requires a reader to meet it on its own terms, versus one which works to persuade you that its terms are interesting and worth the effort.
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Date: 2025-11-03 09:33 pm (UTC)Oh, it makes sense that Reid would have written frankly about his personal relationship, too! The tone of this novella was just so forward; it really lands as this being a person who had strong feelings about queer visibility.
Start with Cakes and Ale! I got regshoe into Maugham through that book. It's a good read. If I read more from him I'll be looking at others of his mature works.