Decline and Fall

Rating:
Summary: an acid satire
Review: This is an under-read classic. The hapless hero, having been chucked out of university, lands in a barely respectable public school. What follows is an hilarious skewering of twentieth century society in microcosm. Sex, art, money, and, of course, class, figure prominently, with a sly nod at race, to boot. Never a dull moment.

Rating:
Summary: Pen Dipped in Acid
Review: Waugh's debut novel has the scattershot approach of a boy with his first bee-bee gun. The church, the gentry, public schools, the penal system, the judiciary, token blacks and the aristocracy. If he missed anything or anybody, that's the biggest accident of all.

Paul Pennyfather is the transparent vessel that is acted upon by all the howling winds of hypocrisy. I liked Paul and always expected him to muddle through with his excellent manners ("always a gentleman.") He is sent down from an Oxford look-alike under the cloud of "indecent behavior" when he is the victim of a hazing incident that leaves him trouserless on the common. His guardian cancels his allowance for the shame of it, and Paul is forced to take a position in sub-par boys school in Wales. The cast of characters is well used, whoever he meets always returns later in the story until Waugh settles them or kills them off, whichever suits his fancy. As wild as the ride is, the story ends tidily with Paul in exactly the same position as when he started.

There is an undertone of iron in this biting tale. I think Waugh already was getting his religious visions in place. "Decline and Fall" is brilliant, but moody. Your discomfort level might rise even while you are laughing. "Decline and Fall" is an excellent introduction to Evelyn Waugh's works. If all else fails, as another reviewer mentioned, pretend it's a Monty Python sketch.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Pen Dipped in Acid
Review: Waugh's debut novel has the scattershot approach of a boy with his first bee-bee gun. The church, the gentry, public schools, the penal system, the judiciary, token blacks and the aristocracy. If he missed anything or anybody, that's the biggest accident of all.

Paul Pennyfather is the transparent vessel that is acted upon by all the howling winds of hypocrisy. I liked Paul and always expected him to muddle through with his excellent manners ("always a gentleman.") He is sent down from an Oxford look-alike under the cloud of "indecent behavior" when he is the victim of a hazing incident that leaves him trouserless on the common. His guardian cancels his allowance for the shame of it, and Paul is forced to take a position in sub-par boys school in Wales. The cast of characters is well used, whoever he meets always returns later in the story until Waugh settles them or kills them off, whichever suits his fancy. As wild as the ride is, the story ends tidily with Paul in exactly the same position as when he started.

There is an undertone of iron in this biting tale. I think Waugh already was getting his religious visions in place. "Decline and Fall" is brilliant, but moody. Your discomfort level might rise even while you are laughing. "Decline and Fall" is an excellent introduction to Evelyn Waugh's works. If all else fails, as another reviewer mentioned, pretend it's a Monty Python sketch.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Scandalously funny
Review: Waugh's first novel is an outrageous satire that pokes fun at the British class system, religion, and education. If one does not take it at all seriously, then it is a howlingly funny book. His "hero," Paul Pennyfeather, and the other characters float in and out of various kinds of trouble without seeming to learn a single thing. Best moment - the casual, but horrifying fate of poor little Lord Tangent. The amusing illustrations drawn by Waugh himself are a delightful bonus. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more of Waugh.

Rating:
Summary: Scandalously funny
Review: Waugh's first novel is an outrageous satire that pokes fun at the British class system, religion, and education. If one does not take it at all seriously, then it is a howlingly funny book. His "hero," Paul Pennyfeather, and the other characters float in and out of various kinds of trouble without seeming to learn a single thing. Best moment - the casual, but horrifying fate of poor little Lord Tangent. The amusing illustrations drawn by Waugh himself are a delightful bonus. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more of Waugh.

Rating:
Summary: Plausible Dark Comedy
Review: Waugh's gift, so apparent in this novelette, is to fill his books with incident, but to do it in such a way that it never seems gratuitous. Who else could have a drunk misfire the starting pistol at a boy's school's games, have the bullet hit a poor kid's foot, cause the kind of damage that necessitates the removal of the foot, and still have us smiling at the audaciousness of it all? So don't worry, this slim little volume is a full meal, and a very satisfying one. Waugh is also economical - characters regularly return for yet another go at having an effect upon the fate of the main character (reminiscent of "Tom Jones"). T.S. Eliot lovers will also have a pleasant surprise waiting for them: Toward the end of the book, Waugh has a character explaining the meaning of life that sounds suspiciously like a passage from Eliot's "Four Quartets." But you don't have to know that, or anything else really, to get great pleasure from reading "Decline and Fall." Make it your next book.

Rating:
Summary: The funniest Waugh
Review: While I think that Brideshead Revisited is his best, this is Waugh at his funniest, before the iron had got into his soul. The satire of an English public school is executed with such a light touch that even a character's death cannot prick the bubble. Especially recommended to fans of Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim."

Rating:
Summary: The funniest Waugh
Review: While I think that Brideshead Revisited is his best, this is Waugh at his funniest, before the iron had got into his soul. The satire of an English public school is executed with such a light touch that even a character's death cannot prick the bubble. Especially recommended to fans of Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim."

Rating:
Summary: A great read!
Review: Why do you get the reviews for "Loved One" under "Decline and Fall? " Oh well, I thought that "Decline and Fall" was an extremely funny book, full of outrageous characters and events. I'm not giving it 5 stars because I have read better books. I found it hard to relate to the characters because they are so strange, but to like a book you don't have to relate to the characters. All in all I really enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Biting satire of the British class system
Review: _Decline And Fall_ is a biting satire of the British class system. According to "the rules of the game" the British aristocracy not only own all wealth and property, but also have a licence to control and manipulate the lower classes for their own selfish needs. For instance, Margot Beste-Chetwynde, a wealthy and attractive widow deeply involved in the international prostitution trade, manipulates poor Paul Pennyfeather into travelling to Marseilles to assist several of Mrs. B-C's "ladies" detained there. For his part, Paul is arrested and forced to take the rap for Mrs. B-C. Mr. Waugh makes it quite clear that Paul is not the novel's hero. He is too light-weight and inconsequential to assume that role as the name Pennyfeather implies. Paul encounters one mishap after another, including disinheritence by his guardian, having been unjustly blamed for a prank that was played on him at Scone College, where Paul had been enrolled.

_Decline And Fall_ contains a bevy of colorful and picaresque characters: the shadowy butler, Philbrick, who recounts to anyone who will listen myriad versions of his background, none of them true; the drunken fool of a school-master, Prendergast, who later becomes a chaplain at the jail where Paul becomes incarcerated; the bigamist and very elusive Captain Grimes; and Mr. Sebastien (Chokey) Chotmondley, who is Mrs. B-C's constant companion, a sensitive and erudite black man, who is the subject of gossip of Mrs. B-C's aristocratic friends.

Mr. Waugh's novel of class and culture clash is extraordinarily droll and full of dark humor. One character aptly sums up the author's highly cynical and critical philosophy when he puts to Paul Pennyfeather the query if he could ever imagine Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde spending time in prison? Of course not--it is the job of the lower classes to go to prison and to suffer for the pecadillos of the upper classes.