Bit of a handful (A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh)

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
Date:	13/11/00 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A very savage satire

Disadvantages: No sympathetic characters

A dangerous boast, perhaps, but for a very cynical writer, 'A Handful of Dust' is Evelyn Waugh's most cynical book. Unlike Charles Ryder, William Boot or Paul Pennyfeather, the protagonist here, Tony Last, is largely unsympathetic, a hapless, spineless man caught in a situation he doesn't have the wit to deal with.

The book's most famous scene, where Tony's selfish wife Brenda is secretly relieved to discover that it is her son, John, not her lover, John, who has died in an accident sums up just how bitter Waugh's vision of the thirties is. Without the grand romantic tragedy of 'Brideshead' or the gleeful farce of 'Decline and Fall' or 'Vile Bodies', this is an acrid, devastating account of the upper class in moral turmoil.

It seems to lose its way towards the end, as Tony disappears off to a bizarre fate on another continent, but I think the off-the-rails conclusion suits it rather well. Like all of Waugh's books, it's emminently readable, just more savage the rest of them.

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