Product Description

In his elegant, malicious prose, Evelyn Waugh satirizes British society as he saw it over three decades. From Work Suspended, where Plant, a writer of detective fiction, puts his incomplete novel in a drawer until such time as he can finish it (that is to say after the war), to Basil Seal Rides Again, in which the hero of Black Mischief defeats the children of the Sixties, these stories encompass much of the social milieu of the twentieth century. The volume also includes the fragment Charles Ryder's Schooldays, which sketches the background to the narrator of Brideshead Revisited.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16307 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of Europe, the Near East, Africa and tropical America, and published a number of travel books, including Labels (1930), Remote People, (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934) and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936). In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. When the Going was Good and The Loved One preceded Men at Arms, which came out in 1952, the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour' trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961. He died in 1966.

Customer Reviews

A Great Novel from a Master Satirist
You know that when you see a passage from Eliot's THE WASTE LAND appearing before the title page that you are not headed for 300 pages of fun and games. Sure there is the usual stock of Waugh humor, wit, and snappy dialogue to be had here, but this ranks as amongst his darkest novels. It's tragicomedy at its finest. It's also one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever read, perfect in pitch, cadence, wording, razor sharp characterization, mood, you name it.

Like a number of his novels, it is set primarily in England, between the wars, bouncing back and forth between London and an Estate in the country. The plot boils down to the break up of a marriage and the decline and fall of the central character, Lord of the manor and eventual "Explorer," Anthony (Tony) Mast.

Tony means well. He really does. It's just that he's so fixated on maintaining Hetton, his hereditary estate, that he doesn't even notice when his lovely wife Brenda engages in an affair with an inconsequential and boorish young society chap to whom Waugh assigns the inglorious name, John Beaver.

Waugh's customary drollery comes to the fore as he depicts the cavalier attitudes towards the affair on the part of Tony's and Brenda's social circle. They are rather like actors in a Restoration play, whose moral compasses have become entirely skewed. Though not as moralistic as some of Waugh's late novels, A HANDFUL OF DUST definitely offers a portrait of a very decadent society, indeed. These are not sympathetic characters. Even the two children who enter into the plot are hardly what one would call likeable.

This novel definitely takes some unexpected turns, leading us eventually to a denouement in the Amazon Jungle. The ending has to rank as one of the greatest in literature.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. The English are the greatest satirists and Waugh was the master of the genre amongst 20th century writers. My only minor quibble is that at times I had a tough time keeping up with names of some of the characters.

I've got a couple more Waugh books on my list, but will go with VILE BODIES next, as it's already on my shelf.

This edition has print large enough that I didn't need my reading glasses. It's the quickest 300 page novel I've ever read. It only took about 6 hrs cover to cover, and I am not a fast reader. I really was so transfixed that I had to read it straight through, which I don't usually do these days.
BEK

And that dust is golden
Waugh was a wine critic with no equal. He is a satirist with no equal. His eye for social detail could not be crisper, his tongue could not be sharper. At times he will have you writhing with laughter; at times he will have you crying in pain.
As with much of Waugh's work his own life is a weighty influence. What distinguishes this novel from his earlier work is the heavy undercurrent that permeates thoughout. The title of the work is taken from T.S. Eliot's seminal modernist work 'The Waste Land', and that is precisely what Waugh sets out to describe. Although the humour follows on through Waugh's work, this is not the light-hearted jaunt through English polite society of 'Vile Bodies'. On occasion 'A Handful of Dust' is dark and damning.
That said, the work is highly amusing in places. Such a marriage of humour and despair might seem improbable if not impossible. It would be for rank-and-file satirists. Waugh is a class apart.

tomlindup@hotmail.com
This is a good book, but not without its faults. It is a book that highlights the fragility of what we can often take for granted.Tony Last is happy with the life he leads in his country pile. He performs his paternalistic duties with the natural applomb of those whose whole existence has been geared to the day he will inherit. His relationship is apparently the envy of his social set in London. His wife is intelligent, vivacious, beautiful and totally committed to him and their son, John. But all is not what it seems. This seemingly perfect relationship is tested by a particularly objectionable individual, if only due to his mediocrity, and the havoc he wreaks (and in his weak passivity appears to have no moral qualms about) to a relationship we are all gunning for. The lack of emotion of the protagonists is simulataneously admirable and nauseating. So far so good. However, the two faults in the book relate to the rather bizarre description of a journey to Brazil which is both unconvincing and not particularly interesting reading and the two potential endings, both of which are rather unsatisfactory. Still worth it however, as ever, accute and perceptive writing that forces you to come down on one side or the other.