Cakes and Ale (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
(in fullCakes and Ale; or,The Skeleton in the Cupboard) Comic novel by W. Somerset Maugham, published in 1930.  The story is told by Willie Ashenden, who previously appeared in Maugham's short story collection Ashenden. A novelist, Ashenden is befriended by the ambitious, self-serving Alroy Kear, who has been commissioned to write an official biography of the famous novelist Edward Driffield. Kear believes that he must ignore the less than noble aspects of his subject's life in order to write a best-seller. Driffield's first wife, Rosie--vital, open-hearted, generous, but too amoral to fit into Kear's narrow understanding of human behavior--is the cupboard skeleton of the subtitle. She is contrasted with Driffield's hypocritical second wife, and the rather cold Driffield is contrasted with Rosie's warm, gentlemanly second husband. The story satirizes London literary circles and has been widely considered a roman a clef with Maugham as Ashenden, Thomas Hardy as Driffield, and Hugh Walpole as Kear.   --The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature