Up at the Villa (W. Somerset Maugham)

This short novel is a quick read, and has an old-fashioned air (especially in its rather stilted dialogue) which is not unexpected in a novel written in 1940. The events, though, and rather sharply modern. A young widow is living in Italy as she considers the marriage proposal of a man 24 years older, one who has been devoted to her since she was a child, and who has great prospects in his career for the British government. The problem is that, while she has enormous respect for him, she doesn't love him. The night he proposes, as she is thinking it over, she offers a ride to a down-on-his-luck stranger, and the consequences unravel the respectable, comfortable life she saw before her. I was quite taken up in the events of the story, though I have to say that the ending was no surprise. This is a good, if slight, example of the writing nearly a century ago.