That instantly cheers Liza, who joins everyone else hoping to have a great time. Tom reassures her that he’s fine even if Liza is not interested for the moment. Tom is willing to pay for her, but Liza doesn’t think it appropriate that she should take favours from someone she has no intention of marrying. Her good friend Sally is excited about going on a boat fair with her boyfriend and urges Liza to accompany them. She, however, only looks upon him as a friend and is repulsed with the idea of romancing him.
Tom is a young, honest man, madly in love with Liza. Her life is not all rosy though, as she works as a labour girl in a local factory and then comes home to a sick, nagging mother who never has a kind word to say to her. Liza Kemp is one of the prettiest girls in Lambeth, a veritable lotus in the muck. Yet, the story is engaging, and in the end, fans of the author will recogonise many things in the novel that only Maugham could have written. Also, a large part of the book comprises of conversations in the local slang, which makes it that much tougher to read. Here, in a ghetto, where the labour class resides, the mood and tenor are vastly altered. Liza of Lambeth appears distinct because it is so removed from the world the author generally sets his stories in ie upper class London. The novel is Maugham’s shortest, and also most unlike his other works. To his own surprise, the novel was fairly well-received when it was published, and soon Maugham got more offers to write. His work took him to the doorsteps of the poor and needy in the slums of Lambeth, and it is his experience and observations here that gave him the material for the book. It was his first attempt at writing a novel, and this he did while practising as a doctor. The book was written by Maugham when he was all of 23. The graphic violence and the extreme misfortune of the lead character evoke a deep sense of horror. Almost every single novel of his has a grim death in it, but nothing is as brutal as what one witnesses in Liza of Lambeth. Maugham in fact always had a great eye for human tragedy and unfailingly took up themes about the impossibility of love and the doomed nature of marriages. It isn't as if his other novels are all light and sunshine. Not because it is poor, but because it is so chillingly tragic. Liza Of Lambeth (1897) is perhaps Maugham's only novel which I don't have the heart to revisit.
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