Book Review - Ashenden by Somerset Maugham

Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A lot of archaic terms like celerity, persiflage, bedizened, titivate, furbelows, contumely, acidulous, chaffered, perturbation, serviable, rhodomontade.
Whereas there are bits of lyrical prose...

was received with a politeness to which no exception could be taken, but with a frigidity that would have sent a little shiver down the spine of a polar bear.

...there are passages that would be ‘racist’ in the present day:

showed a fat-faced, swarthy man, with full lips and a fleshy nose; his hair was black, thick and straight, and his very large eyes even in the photograph were liquid and cow-like. He looked ill-at-ease in European clothes.
It was done by a native photographer in Calcutta and the surroundings were naïvely grotesque. Chandra Lal stood against a background on which had been painted a pensive palm tree and a view of the sea. One hand rested on a heavily carved table on which was a rubber-plant in a flower-pot.
"You wouldn't have thought there was anything very attractive in that greasy little nigger. God, how they run to fat."

I picked this up as it was one of the books that had inspired le Carre.

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