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Title: A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0-316-92605-1 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.16 (38 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ingenious
Comment: In this book, the protagonist is Tony Last, an Englishman who would much rather tend to his beloved estate in th country than join his wife on trips to see their arrogant and aristocratic friends in London. Brenda, the wife, becomes bored with their quaint life, has an affair, and Tony's son dies in an accident. In a strange twist, on a trip to South America near the book's end, he ends up in the dense jungle in the care of an illiterate man who promises to let him go but instead forces him to read aloud from Dickens. The main idea is that betrayal follows Tony wherever he goes-- from his wife in England to the enigmatic man in the jungle. It's a enormously humorous satire of the London aristocracy,in which the people treat their "friends' misfortunes as entertainment. In fact, they gossip about the affair his wife is having in his own house, during a party he is throwing. The jungle is a parable for London-- seemingly harmless at first, but with dark undercurrents of backstabbing, lies, and treachery. A terrific novel by a Waugh, a brilliant writer.
Rating: 5
Summary: Waugh's world of whimsy
Comment: There was no shortage of great British comic writers in the first half of the twentieth century, but Evelyn Waugh stands out with his own peculiar style, his genius lying in his ability to find the natural latent humor in any conceivable character or situation, no matter how solemn or tragic. The plot of "A Handful of Dust" goes in strange, unlikely directions for a comic novel -- the sad fate of its protagonist near the end fits the Aristotelian definition of tragedy -- but in Waugh's world, every misfortune is merely a setup for a new quirky development.
It is the story of the dissolution of the marriage of Lord Tony and Lady Brenda Last, but that's just what happens in the background. The Lasts' house, an old country manor called Hetton with rooms named after characters from Arthurian legend, is Tony's pride and joy, even more so than their little son John Andrew. One weekend they receive as an unwelcome guest an acquaintance of Tony's, an idle, insipid young Londoner named John Beaver who lives with his mother due to limited finances. Beaver has a rotten time, but he attracts the interest of Brenda, who decides to take a flat in London to have an affair with him and tells Tony she's there taking a course in "economics."
To assuage her guilt, Brenda tries to set Tony up in an affair of his own by sending him one of her friends as a potential paramour, an ostentatious Moroccan princess who can't even get his name right. Tony is as oblivious to this come-on as he is to his wife's affair, and of course he's the last to find out, but not until after their son's accidental death, which seems to be the wedge that drives them finally apart.
Divorce is inevitable, and Tony, under emotional stress and wanting to get away for a while, decides to take a trip to a new, exotic place. A chance meeting with a curious archeologist named Dr. Messinger, who is searching for a fabulous lost city in South America, convinces him to join the doctor in his rather foolhardy expedition. This turns into an almost surreal adventure -- excursions to equatorial jungles must have represented to the Englishman of Waugh's time some kind of descent into hell -- and culminates in Tony's encounter with a jungle-dwelling crazy old coot whose illiteracy requires someone to stay and read to him -- and he's got a complete collection of Dickens novels.
The humor on which Waugh's reputation rests is in fine form here. Some of it is so subtle it could easily be missed, such as Tony's consultations with the private detectives who are supposed to be catching him in the act of an infidelity for the divorce proceedings; some of it is outright hilarious, as displayed by a scene where a pickled Tony and his friend Jock patronize a den of iniquity called the Sixty-Four. This is the best kind of social satire: funny, smart, occasionally vicious but never crude.
Rating: 5
Summary: A gripping novel with a ripping yarn
Comment: This book is an exploration of a relationship breakdown in the English upper-class during the twenties. There is a biting satire here and the plot appears almost to mirror Anna Karenin in how destructive extra-marital relationships can be.
With the relationship finally broken, Tony Last, the main protagonist takes off to exploring in South America, he does not find gold, but gets himself more than lost but entangled in what appears to be a lifelong relationship with his illiterate saviour who expects Tony to read his collection of Dickens to him. The moral of this is that simple things are rarely found but can bring the most tremendous joy.
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Title: Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926078 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926108 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926116 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316926345 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0316917338 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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