Painted Veil: W. Somerset Maugham

"Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live Call Life."

Brought out amid ridiculous protests of impersonation this book talks about the silly but difficult thing called life. Sometimes charm and tact wins over intelligence, honesty and even love.

"It was incredible that over there, up country, only 600 miles away, men, women and children had been dying like flies" while Kitty who had just been back from there, after having lost her husband to cholera dined with the Townsends and talked about if so and so had gone home and if so and so got cured from the fracture.

Kitty Fane is a pretty young lady but empty headed and shallow. She is married to Walter, a biologist who is intelligent, capable and madly in love with Kitty. But he couldn't win her affections because she thought him cold and proud. She deceives him and the husband's vengeance is in a strange way in which he rather avenged himself for loving her.

The book mentions a little about faith, a lot about cholera and introduces a good variety of persons differing in terms of character and their outlook for life. At no point it is a bore and the story has got some twists that turn in a slow pace that you will always get time to guess correctly.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention.. the book has been made into a movie twice, with the same name