A different style from the books I've read recently but Rain was the first story and good introduction. I realised that Maugham is a keen observer of human nature and describes feelings that we all have with great accuracy. Many of the stories in this book are true to life and recommended reading.
Most of these stories will have been based on the author's personal experiences or reported second hand. Some are deadly accurate, like "The Pool", "The Yellow Streak" a description of guilt.
It's rather disappointing that people have a superficial interpretation of the storiesvased on the language. ( )

This is the first of a four volume short story collection by William Somerset Maugham. For about three weeks Maugham kept me enchanted with his 30 stories in this book. 30 canons I'd say. Most of these stories mean to scrutinize the human nature. Maugham was a doctor in personal life which certainly often led him to play the role of a dissector. Evidently, he incorporated this other being of him into his works when he became a writer. He dissected and looked into the patterns how humans deal with their fellow brothers and sisters in the everyday life. The stories are not extraordinary. Nor are they different from any regular ones. Yet they ARE unique. Maugham has got a wonderfully comical tone and he's a very wordy writer. You can almost visualize him telling you stories using his sharp humors with an impassive face. You definitely will buy his rhetoric style and sometimes he may leave you stupefied.

The stories in this book are written in different parts of the world. Maugham was a great traveler and he wrote the stories based upon his experiences in England-his motherland-and other foreign regions. It's a curious thing that Maugham himself is present in almost all the stories and describes the happenings in the first person. Expanding from South America to the Down Under Australia, he set his venues for his stories. One thing that might strike you is that people from all over these places in his stories are somewhat close in nature. They think alike, they love alike and they lie alike. I don't know if Maugham meant it at all but what I surmised from these stories is regardless of the geography, people all over the world are more or less similar. Yet, there are so many variations that Maugham had to write 30 different stories (well,at least for this volume) which certainly is an infinitesimally small number compared to the innumerable possibilities of human behavior patterns.

Thirty is a big number when you're to name your favorite ones from among them specially when all of the thirty stories are equally good, but still there are stories in this collection I will be remembering for a long time. My most loved ones are 'Rain', 'The Fall of Edward Barnard', 'The Pool', 'The Three Fat Women of Antibes', 'Gigolo and Gigolette', 'Judgement Seat' and 'Mr. Know All'. And now, in the end, I'd like to thank Mr. William Somerset Maugham for introducing me with the multitude of triviality of human lives in such a joking manner. Great job Sire. ( )

This final classic collection reveals Somerset Maugham’s unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships in tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice.
The stories range from “The Lotus Eater” where a man envisions a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of “The Outstation” and “The Back of Beyond” in Malaya and South East Asia.(less) ( )

I want to give this book more than five stars. Maugham is a great short story writer. For example Rain is probably perfect. Some of the other reviews are quite detailed but I will just add that some of the racist language is uncomfortable to read in the 21st century although Maugham seems deliberately to put the words in the mouths of unsympathetic characters. Finally I don't remember when stories produced such a physical reaction (of dread or fascination or sadness or contentment). Maugham is a magician. ( )

This final classic collection reveals Somerset Maugham’s unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships in tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice. The stories range from “The Lotus Eater” where a man envisions a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of “The Outstation” and “The Back of Beyond” in Malaya and South East Asia. ( )