Rating: 
Summary: Classic of satire
Review: The social elites of the inter-war period in England provide a rich tapestry on which a tragic and sardonic tale is told. Waugh breathes life into characters who are extreme in their vanity, yet tragically susceptible and frail. The result is one of the classic satirical novels of the last century. Readers who enjoy the deliberate and biting style of George Orwell will find Waugh a dear addition to their literary diet.
Rating: 
Summary: Distinctly British and distinctly Waugh
Review: There is no better way to describe this book than "glacially sardonic," the words that appear in the review on the back cover. It is written with a sharp-biting wit that moves and builds ever-so-slowly yet ever-so-surely. While I don't agree with the majority of literary experts that this is Waugh's finest work (Brideshead Revisited was more ambitious in scope and crafted at a level of mastery equal to or better than this), A Handful of Dust is a remarkably intelligent book and a pleasure to read.Waugh has found here the perfect blend of plot and prose. The story is engaging, entertaining, and quick-moving, thanks to the terse dialog and minimal narrative. Humor abounds in this novel, but not in the laugh-out-loud sort of way. I found myself on the verge of laughter throughout - I would call it a sustained crescendo of humor. It's a type of humor that I can't imagine finding in American literature; it's distinctly British, and distinctly Waugh. But this book is more than just funny. It offers a somewhat profound commentary on the decadence of upper class life in 1930s Britain. One can't help laughing at the way Tony Last and Lady Brenda have named the bedrooms in their country estate after characters from the King Arthur stories. "Where will our weekend guests sleep? How about in Galahad?" Waugh has perhaps exaggerated the eccentricities of the people whom his characters represent, but his point is well taken.
Rating:
Summary: Distinctly British and distinctly Waugh
Review: There is no better way to describe this book than "glacially sardonic," the words that appear in the review on the back cover. It is written with a sharp-biting wit that moves and builds ever-so-slowly yet ever-so-surely. While I don't agree with the majority of literary experts that this is Waugh's finest work (Brideshead Revisited was more ambitious in scope and crafted at a level of mastery equal to or better than this), A Handful of Dust is a remarkably intelligent book and a pleasure to read. Waugh has found here the perfect blend of plot and prose. The story is engaging, entertaining, and quick-moving, thanks to the terse dialog and minimal narrative. Humor abounds in this novel, but not in the laugh-out-loud sort of way. I found myself on the verge of laughter throughout - I would call it a sustained crescendo of humor. It's a type of humor that I can't imagine finding in American literature; it's distinctly British, and distinctly Waugh. But this book is more than just funny. It offers a somewhat profound commentary on the decadence of upper class life in 1930s Britain. One can't help laughing at the way Tony Last and Lady Brenda have named the bedrooms in their country estate after characters from the King Arthur stories. "Where will our weekend guests sleep? How about in Galahad?" Waugh has perhaps exaggerated the eccentricities of the people whom his characters represent, but his point is well taken.
Rating:
Summary: Waugh's world of whimsy
Review: 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:
Summary: A HANDFUL OF DUST
Review: This being the third of Waugh's novels I have read, it is probably my favorite. Waugh is easily the most readable of the great British authors of the 20th century.'A Handful of Dust' is not as funny as 'SCOOP' but it is sharp satire of British society. The book has alternate endings and I prefer the one where Tony and Brenda reunite. The story centers around the Last family, principally Tony and his wife Brenda. All the elements of the demise of a marriage are contained in this masterpiece - a stodgy husband, a cheating wife, and a tragic death. Beware ladies because the females in the novel are on a whole as weak and superficial a group as ever encountered. Waugh at the time of its writing was reportedly recovering from a failed romance and no doubt was influenced by a jilting fiance. Brenda Last,in particular, is a character you will love to dislike. Brenda's infatuation with the 'neer do well' mama's boy, John Beaver, stretches the reader's imagination. Both conclusions are appropiate and you will be staisfied with either.
Rating: 
Summary: A tasteless attempt at mocking the rich that wasnt funny
Review: This book attempts to satarize the elite English but trys too hard, it is unrealistic. Many schools have been forced to read it and I have not met one student who liked it.
Rating:
Summary: A gripping novel with a ripping yarn
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant book, pity about the ending
Review: This book is typical of Waugh, an author who loves the concept of irony and satire, yet in a written interview for the BBC he said that he does not consider himself to be a satirist. "A Handful of Dust" is a story about love, betrayal and money. It centres around a dignified man called Tony Last whose wife is having an affair with a lowly unemployed man called Beaver. While Tony loves his wife dearly he is often more concerned with his ugly neo-Gothic mansion called Hetton. Some may argue that he is more concerned with money than his wife, and at times in this book that is very much apparent. He does not grant a divorce not because he doesn't want one but because it will involve selling Hetton. I don't think any one person is to blame in this book as each and everyone of the characters, even Tony himself, has his faults. The disappointing thing about the book is the ending, it is too much like something that has been added on because the author could not think of anything else to write about. While it is good that he has based this part of the book on a personal experience it works best not with the book but separate. We all sympathise with Tony when he is imprisoned to read Dickens to Mr Todd but remember Mr Todd is very old and probably does not have much longer to live.
Rating:
Summary: Waugh's Best
Review: This if probably my favorite of Evelyn Waugh's novels. While it is not as sophisticated as Bridshead Revisited and its characters are not as well developed, it provides the reader with a fantastic example of the literary form that Waugh specialized in - bitter, caustic satire. Waugh elegantly and effortlessly provides us with the dark, mean-spirited social commentary that the French New Wave movement brought to film thirty years later. A Handful of Dust is peopled with nothing but caricatures, but they are so finely crafted that the book lacks the clumsiness that I've found in some of his other satires like Scoop or Decline and Fall. With them, Waugh has generated a powerful indictment of Britain's idle class during the post WWI era. I always find it fun to read a P.G. Wodehouse novel after Waugh to get opposite ends of the spectrum. Following Waugh's society of complete moral bankruptcy with Wodehouse's good-natured buffoonery makes you wonder just what on earth was going on in England between the wars. I must agree with many of the other reviewers that the ending is a disappointment (as are the endings to Bridshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, and The Loved One). If Waugh is trying to create an analogy between Brenda's imprisonment in a dull marriage to Tony's plight of spending the rest of his days in the jungle reading to his illiterate captor, I think he has performed it in a rather inelegant manner. It is almost as if he had an idea for a short story that he tacked on the end of this novel. Nonetheless, this does not keep A Handful of Dust from being on of Waugh's finest novels.
Rating:
Summary: very funny book, better than the movie
Review: This is a fairly early novel by Waugh. The opening makes you expect a sort of upper class idyl. THen gradually the life of the protaganist, Tony Last, begins to collapse and it turns into an excellent satire with a very funny ironic ending.
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