Book Review: "The Magician" by W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham is an amazing writer and honestly, I have read quite a few novels and short stories by him including his very famous novel "Of Human Bondage" which was made into a film starring Bette Davis (which was also a brilliant film). "The Magician" though was also a really different novel by W. Somerset Maugham in the sense that it was darker, it had more superstition and it was not necessarily comfortable from time to time. It is about a couple of people who meet a man called Oliver Haddo - who I think is supposed to be based on Aleister Crowley but I'm not sure. The book explores the philosophy of the occult and its beliefs. It also explores aspects of dark magic and superstition. There is a ton of stuff to explore in this novel and again, it is very different to most W. Somerset Maugham novels I have read.

As I have said before, this is a fairly uncomfortable book in the nature of what the book itself actually talks about and how it talks about the dark philosophies around magic and superstition. If you have a look at this quotation, you will find out the basics of how Oliver Haddo interacts with the rest of the group. Needless to say, the philosophies and beliefs, the quotations of description etc. are brilliantly written with their depth and extensive amount of thought that has been paid to the writing process:

“Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.”

The Aleister Crowley notions, the philosophies about magic, the darkness about mankind and everything else in between is within this tweet. I was definitely shocked when I started reading this and honestly, it was because I didn't read the blurb to begin with. I just picked it up because it had W. Somerset Maugham's name on the cover and I had not read it yet. I probably should have read the blurb in order to prepare myself for some of these very strange quotations which I would sit there thinking about whilst reading it.

There are quotations about human interaction that I have come across have been honestly some of the strangest dialogues and conversations in modern literature. There would be these conversations that seemed normal but then underneath, there's something almost dark about it. Such as someone coming out with something philosophical that you could not move on from unless you understood it - so you would sit there and think about it for a few minutes.

"Buy Ashantis, they are bound to go up." I did as he told me; but my father was always unlucky in speculation, and they went down steadily. I sold out at considerable loss, and concluded that in the world beyond they are as ignorant of the tendency of the Stock Exchange as we are in this vale of sorrow.'"

You see what I mean?

In conclusion, I have honestly not read such a gothic and almost horrifically philosophical novel by W. Somerset Maugham. I hope there are undiscovered novels by him that I can read that are more like this and see what he is honestly talking about. I’m not going to lie - I already knew about his interest in the occult but this is on a whole new level. I hope that you read this if you have not already. It’s definitely worth all the thinking.