Of Human Bondage

I picked up Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage because it was already on the shelf and because it was supposed to be a classic.  While it's not a bad novel, I just don't see how it's remarkable enough to warrant that description.  Maugham tells the story of the first 30 years of the sensitive young club-footed boy Philip Carey.  While Philip has a basically good heart, he's not really portrayed as that likeable a character, which is surprising since we are told in the author's preface that he is autobiographically inspired.  He's so overly sensitive, so filled with shame and rage, so fixated on class distinctions, so ... British, that he's just a hard kid to love.  Naturally, there's some drama in Philip's life.  He's an orphan.  He's differently-abled.  He falls in love with a whore.  He runs out of money.  All of these events and Philip's reactions to it are portrayed in fluid and mercifully spare prose that unfolds only gradually, growing up with its main character, as it were.  But in the end, it feels like the novel makes a 600 page mountain out of what is, at bottom, a molehill.  Growing up seems really dramatic while it happens, but in a sense it's one of the most boring and commonplace stories humans have to tell.  And despite all the drama, Philip Carey's childhood leads to the most pedestrian and bourgeois of destinations -- a small town doctor with a wife and kids.