I just idly took down Volume 4 of Somerset Maugham's complete short stories from the shelf and read one. Then I read another. Then another. Very moreiish.
Details of concrete life just thrown away. Despite the cynicism (all those Malayan unfaithful couples) I will admit to tear being in my eyes in a coffee bar as I finished P & O, the story of a middle aged woman returning home from the Far East after here husband was unfaithful and learning to forgive him when someone she meet casually on board dies.
A curious writer. Definitely not Victorian, indeed anti-Victorian, but not interested in C20 modernism either. A 30s Maupassant?