you hear the title of human bondage and expect the book to be really exciting and freaked out but then you dig deeper and realize its 600 pages of the blandest story ever mixed with some mid-grade to genuinely awful writing. i think he talks about this girls ‘little white ears’ at least 50 times.
mind you, the only part ever advertised ab the story is the part with that girl, and even then she’s also genuinely soooo annoying. i love a girl whos mean to her boyfriend but mildred was srsly just such a fucking idiot! i don’t support all women some of you are fucking stupid!
but still not as annoying as philip. oh philip carey i want you dead i hate your ass so fucking much. and the thing is the first 150 pages detailing his youth were half bearable, but when he becomes an adult he is so dull and vaguely evil or smug in the way average men are. i remember him actively pursuing this woman and then 60 pages later hes bitching about how ugly she was and how shes too old for him and how he wished he lost his v card to a 17yr old hottie. like hello you put yourself in this position. his self-pitying actually drove me up and down the walls. and yk, i actually rlly like guys who hate themselves but philip is so ugh ugh ugh. like its not fun when he does it. its just rlly rlly boring.
ik the point is that hes meant to be middling but is there not a more interesting way to go about it? do we really need 400 pages of maugham droning on about random people and the breakfast you ate with them? and fuck that could probably be pretty fire if literally anyone else wrote it.
