A Handful Of Dust

Rating:
Summary: Super Satire, Some Problems
Review: I read this book this past year in a University literature class, and I must say, Waugh is a first-rate satirist and easily one of the best in the twentieth century. The book is, as good satires are, bitter and darkly comical, and it builds in its ludicrousness. That said, the one troubling parallel Waugh draws (and he is by no means the only one to do so) is the association of money with depravity. Money is a tool -- it does not make people depraved any more than it makes them virtuous. It is up to the individual to choose the function of money; the individuals in "Handful" chose to corrupt their money.

Rating:
Summary: good beginning, unconvincing ending
Review: I really liked the beginning of the story and the description of the collapse of Tony and Brenda's marriage along with the gossiping that flourishes around it. A real piece of good writing and a keen eye on society and on hypocritical behaviour in general. However, I did not like the second half. I know that Waugh had his reasons to write the book as he did and that he wanted to convey a certain meaning. Nontheless, I did not like it. A great pity, because it is a beautifully written and well structured book with a sweet, endearing heroe one can't help pitying and loving. I wished Waugh had planned a more plausible ending for his Tony Last, granted that he wanted to have him die in the end. But why in the jungle???? He just spoiled the whole story.

Rating:
Summary: a gleefully vicious and indifferent book
Review: I wanted to give it five stars. It might as well be. Why not? No good reason . . .

Here is a story of atrocious things happening to horrible people. It is cleverly written and the characters certainly give you an in depth idea of who they are and what they believe in. You can't quite come to hate them but one must admit to enjoying watching them suffer. I found this book similar in theme if not in tone to the somber Appointment in Samarraha by John O'Hara, but the final pitch of this novel is rather cheerful. It seems as though Waugh himself was enjoying their suffering until he finally got so fed up and annoyed with them that he exiles them to their appropriate hells, be it a repetition of cycles or an absurdist nightmare that becomes ultimately rather numbing.

I found the final affect on me to be really quite similar. It is a very entertaining book . . .

Rating:
Summary: A life-long loathing of Dickens?
Review: I've just learned he really didn't like Dickens ... Very significant for one of the two endings chosen ...

Rating:
Summary: Ingenious
Review: 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:
Summary: It's a jungle out there -- and over here, too.
Review: In this dead-on perfect skewering of upper class snobbism, Tony Last escapes the savagery of English society, only to wind up amidst real savages with a distinctly English overlord.

This is Waugh at his finest; filing his prose style down to razor sharpness, hurling it with perfect accuracy, and nailing English snobbism right to the wall.

Rating:
Summary: Waugh Puts It All Together Here
Review: In this, his fourth novel, Evelyn Waugh delivered on the promise of his first two. "A Handful of Dust" is funnier, better structured, and a far more mature and moving piece of satire than either "Decline and Fall" or "Vile Bodies." (His third effort, "Black Mischief" returns this summer from out-of-print limbo.) English country gentleman Tony Last is held up as one of the last of his breed: land wealthy but cash poor, he spends too much time restoring his gothic mansion while his wife sits in third class when she takes the train to London. We might expect such a woman to grow bored and have an affair, and Brenda Last does not disappoint, except in her choice of the unexceptional youth John Beaver as a lover. Nor does she disappoint in trying to blame Tony or others when it comes time for a settlement: "Tony, don't be so bullying. The lawyers are doing everything."

While Waugh takes pleasure in satirizing Tony's breed, he is more sympathetic to the individual, and the reader begins to root for him once he finally stands up for himself, and cannot help but pity him as he makes his one final journey to refresh himself for life without his family. "A Handful of Dust" is the fifth Waugh novel I have read, and by far the most satisfying so far. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Savagery at its most ironic
Review: Many seem to think that the ending of this novel is merely tacked on, when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is the rest of the novel that is tacked on. "A Handful of Dust" began life as a short story entitled "The Man Who Liked Dickens". That short story provided the genesis and for, and later half of, this novel, as Waugh became interested in the idea of how the condemned man ever came to be in that situation.

This is a novel about savagery. Tony, a romantic and faithful man who cannot imagine that anyone might actually wish to knowingly betray him, moves from the savagery of civilization into the wilds of Brazil, looking for the "city" within the savagery of the jungle. If civilization isn't civilized, then maybe civilization actually lies within the world's darkest corners.

In the end, the cycle begins again with the next generation, who have failed to learn the lessons no one thought to teach them.

Rating:
Summary: Pastoral, in a twisted sort of way
Review: Now I know where Martin Amis got his writing style from. "Pastoral" would be a kind word to describe this work, as weirdly absorbing as it becomes. The basic premise mirrors that of many comedies of manners from around its time; wife takes apartment in the city and takes a lover, leaving the hapless husband at home. Wife feels guilty. Wife attempts to set husband up with a lover. Husband is oblivious. The repercussions are immense.

I got the feeling that Waugh was trying too hard at the beginning of this book, and that after he stopped trying and started just plain writing, the book got a whole lot better. He spends a relatively unnecessary length of time setting the scene before anything really starts happening, and that scene-setting is interminable. (I should mention that Amis' writing style mirrors those first seventy pages to a T.) However, once Waugh stops attempting to be so damned urbane, and gets on with the task of putting his characters in increasingly unrealistic situations, both the pace and the humor pick up. The obligatory tragedy happens, and when it does, it's a mark of how much better the book has gotten that it's unexpected, and the reader realizes that maybe he feels something more for these characters than a cordial sort of despise.

One could (and one is sorely tempted) compare and contrast Waugh's novel with Amis' _Dead Babies_ as synecdochic of what's happened to British humor over the past sixty years. One will not stoop to such a level, since one is utterly infatuated with Dawn French, and thinks The Vicar of Dibley is the cat's pyjamas where TV sitcoms are concerned. So one will content oneself with saying that Waugh, using understatement and irony, has written a far more humorous novel than Amis, whose main conceits were slapstick and drugs. Still not one of the better things I've read this year, could have used a good editor in the beginning, but not bad, not bad at all.

Rating:
Summary: Should be read only as a class assignment
Review: On a technical level, I can appreciate Waugh's mastery of language, sense of irony, and characterization. As many of the other reviewers note, the book succeeds in these aspects. But is this a book worth reading? Not at all.

Basically, the characters in this book are so loathsome that by page 10 you can't stand them anymore. Maybe British readers of the '30's (and today?) who had to put up with petulant aristocratic snobs enjoyed reading this book just to see them get their comeuppance, but for the rest of us the book isn't worth the effort. Since all the characters are from the upper class, the novel lacks the conflict with or commentary from the less privileged classes that engages the "ordinary" reader. As a simple counterexample, John LeCarre often rages against the same prejudices and arrogance of British public school graduates, but we can empathize with his protagonists.

I'm a bibiliophile, but I disliked this book so intensely that it is one of the few books I threw in the trash after reading. It wasn't even worth selling secondhand.