The Razor's Edge

When I try to describe this book to others, it always sounds like I'm relating some soap-opera drama, but the experience of reading it is so much richer than most anything I've ever read. I only picked it because a reading challenge task required me to choose a book with a character with a first or last name that is the same middle name as one of my parents, and so “Larry Darrell” showed up in a search for “Darrell”. How serendipitous!

Larry Darrell's life is followed by the narrator, who is Maugham, the author, but it is a fictional story. Larry ends up searching out questions about life through experience and travel, and many of his answers are found in the practice of Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. But, the other characters in the novel are also fully realized and lived through the narrative and it was simply a very satisfying experience to read. I will definitely but Maugham's other novels on my TBR list.