Teaser Tuesday Book -- The Painted Veil

I've chosen a classic for this week's Teaser Tuesday book selection. I read it just recently and wish I'd known about it years ago. Before I read the book I saw the film based on the story. Sometimes seeing the story in film, especially for a classic, helps me appreciate the book so much more.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly book swap hosted by Miz B over at Should be Reading that is open to all booklovers. Miz B's rule of play are simple:

--Open your current read to a random page (I sometimes cheat on this.);
--share two teaser sentences from that page, being careful not to be a spoiler;
--post your link in the comments on Miz B's webpage and, best of all, check out other players' selections and leave a nice comment for them.


The Painted Veil
by W. Somerset Maugham

Kitty Fane: "I'm coming with you to that place."
Walter Fane: "Oh, good."
KF: "When do you want me to be ready?"
WF: "Tomorrow night."
KF: "I suppose I needn't take more than a few summer things and a shroud, need I?"

p. 85

Synopsis: The Painted Veil is a modern day retelling of one of the stories from Dante's Inferno of an Italian gentlewoman whose husband suspected her of adultry and punished her by banishment and, when he dared, death. Somerset Maugham set his story in England and China in 1925. Kitty Fane, a pretty and shallow young woman, impulsively marries Dr. Walter Fane, a socially awkward civil servant posted in Hong Kong as a bacteriologist. Kitty marries a man that she does not even like to escape her mother's demands that she find a husband to support her. Walter fell in love with Kitty the first time he saw her and asked her to go with him to Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong Kitty soon tires of Walter and has a short-lived affair with Charlie Townsend, an assistant colonial secretary. Walter finds out about the affair and gives Kitty two choices. She must accompany him to a cholera-infested village in inland China where he has been assigned to help treat the villagers and find a way to stem the epidemic. If she refuses, he will divorce her and expose her as an adulterer. Bitterly she accepts her fate and they travel to the village as combatants under one roof. But gradually the horrible conditions help them to lift ". . .the painted veil which those who live call life" and find a way to change and forgive each other.

The motion picture for The Painted Veil was released in 2006, starring Edward Norton as Dr. Walter Fane and Naomi Watts as Kitty Fane. Here's a brief trailer for the film so you can see how right they were to play the Fanes. I also found the cinematography of inland China just breathtaking.