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Title: Gripping immediacy of the characters
Review: The Painted Veil is a delight to read, a sometimes cruel but more often sympathetic description of the weakness of the human condition.The characters are well-delineated and the sympathy they elicit is almost heart-wrenching. It's all there, fear, desperation, revenge, petty spite but love and forgiveness too.Maughams almost ethereal perception of human emotions stripped of their masks is disconcerting but nonetheless deeply, deeply moving.
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