A Handful of Dust

As much as I enjoyed Vile Bodies, I enjoyedhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust even more. Ever since I tore through the works of Agatha Christie as a kid, I've been fascinated by the British upper class of the first half of the 20th century.

A Handful of Dust tells the tale of Tony and Brenda Last. Tony is landed gentry who struggles mightily to keep up with his eroding estate, Hetton Abbey. Brenda is a young thing who is struggling herself with rural boredom and the raising of the couple's son, John. Add to the mix John Beaver, an avid social climber who has no particular purpose in life other than sponging off of his well-to-do friends.

After young John Last is killed in a riding accident, Brenda becomes more and more distant from Tony and establishes herself in a London apartment where she enjoys the whirl of the London social season and an affair with Beaver. This leads eventually to a planned divorce, but as Tony finds the stipulations untenable, he decides to embark on a Brazilian safari instead with unexpected and unforgettable results.

Waugh specialized in scathing attacks on this class of people, and this novel is a perfect example of the form. At times laugh out loud funny, it is an entertaining reminder that even with all the trappings of our material lives and our often banal personal triumphs and pitfalls, in the end we are all the same.

Vile Bodies

I am a fan of British humor. To me, the Brits have mastered the nifty trick of mixing the absurd with the very, very dry. Peter Sellers, Monty Python, and Ricky Gervais all come to mind. Evelyn Waugh, best known for his novel Brideshead Revisited, has also tapped into this reservoir of English comedy in his second novel, Vile Bodies.

Set in the years after the first World War, Vile Bodies centers on the character of Adam, a down on his luck writer who undergoes a series of reversals of fortune. He is in love with Nina, but alternately does and doesn't have the money to marry her. And while their up and down love affair is the focus, the novel is really a sharp lampoon of the 'jet set' of the day and their follies and foibles. Characters such as Mrs. Melrose Ape, the evangelist, Mr. Outrage, the Prime Minister, and the Drunken Major are on hand to act as a canvas for Waugh's broad swipes at British pre-war culture. All of the latest fads and fancies are on hand: zeppelins, motor races, parties, film making, and more parties. The juxtaposition between the old who are still trying to embrace Victorian morals, and the young, who are portrayed as vapid, yet resourceful, is one of the things that makes this novel stand out.

A particularly thoughtful point for me was the ending, which finds Britain at war in Europe, and the various fates of our characters seem fitting for the action that has preceded. Great stuff. The book was adapted into a film by Stephen Fry.