Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780141183961
ISBN: 0141183969
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: December 07, 2000
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Sales Rank: 1659438
Studio: Penguin Classics

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Related Items:

• Brideshead Revisited
• Decline and Fall
• Vile Bodies
• Scoop
• The Sword of Honour Trilogy (Everyman's Library)
• see more

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
In his elegant, malicious prose, Evelyn Waugh satirizes British society as he saw it over three decades. From Work Suspended, where Plant, a writer of detective fiction, puts his incomplete novel in a drawer until such time as he can finish it (that is to say after the war), to Basil Seal Rides Again, in which the hero of Black Mischief defeats the children of the Sixties, these stories encompass much of the social milieu of the twentieth century. The volume also includes the fragment Charles Ryder's Schooldays, which sketches the background to the narrator of "Brideshead Revisited".

Amazon.com Review:
"All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent."

Few writers have walked the line between farce and tragedy as nimbly as Evelyn Waugh, who employed the conventions of the comic novel to chip away at the already crumbling English class system. His 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust, is a sublime example of his bleak satirical style: a mordantly funny exposé of aristocratic decadence and ennui in England between the wars.

Tony Last is an aristocrat whose attachment to an ideal feudal past is so profound that he is blind to his wife Brenda's boredom with the stately rhythms of country life. While he earnestly plays the lord of the manor in his ghastly Victorian Gothic pile, she sets herself up in a London flat and pursues an affair with the social-climbing idler John Beaver. In the first half of the novel Waugh fearlessly anatomizes the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Everyone moves through an endless cycle of parties and country-house weekends, being scrupulously polite in public and utterly horrid in private. Sex is something one does to relieve the boredom, and Brenda's affair provides a welcome subject for conversation:

It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone.

Tony's indifference and Brenda's selfishness give their relationship a sort of equilibrium until tragedy forces them to face facts. The collapse of their relationship accelerates, and in the famous final section of the book Tony seeks solace in a foolhardy search for El Dorado, throwing himself on the mercy of a jungle only slightly more savage than the one he leaves behind in England. For all its biting wit, A Handful of Dust paints a bleak picture of the English upper classes, reaching beyond satire toward a very modern sense of despair. In Waugh's world, culture, breeding, and the trappings of civilization only provide more subtle means of destruction. --Simon Leake




Rating: - Suprise ending
For the uninitiated, Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was a man. Today, he is probably best known for his novel Brideshead Revisited, due to the popularity of a 1981 TV mini series adaptation.

His novel A Handful of Dust is a comedy of manners, even a farce, for the first four chapters. Tony Last is devoted to his estate Hetton, with its Victorian Gothic monstrosity of a mansion. His shallow wife Brenda has an affair with John Beaver, a cash-strapped momma's boy. The cuckolded Tony becomes ... Read More

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Rating: - Brideshead Pre-Visited
Precursor to Brideshead Revisited. Lacks the spiritual depth of Brideshead, but is a wickedly funny satire of the fall of the post Victorian English society of the idle rich. Lady Brenda Last is based upon Waugh's ex-wife, Evelyn ("She Evelyn" as their friends referred to her) and is one of the coldest characters in twentieth century fiction.

A Handful of Dust has a completely different feel to it than Waugh's other satires like Scoop, Vile Bodies, and Decline and Fall. The characters in ... Read More

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Rating: - Hearts of Darkness
Fear in a handful of dust is a complicated metaphor. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. On the one hand, the Anglican burial invocation is known to every Englishman, and yet, it was probably inspired by the biblical quote: 'for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return'(Genesis3:19). Eliot,on the other hand, was thinking about the legend of The Fisher King--and the terror of drought to any agricultural region...any Okie from the Dustbowl knew the fear inherent in a Handful of Dust. The notion of physical ... Read More

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Rating: - Another Great
I won't go on and on about my praise for Waugh. He is one of my favorite writers.

About the book, I felt SO bad when I read about Tony Last at the end. So cruel. So, so cruel. It gave me the shivers.

So, another Waugh novel that is witty, funny, and all the other things his books are. If you can appreciate intelligent writing then I highly recommend this book.

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Rating: - The Descension of Decadence
The author paints a poignant tale of immorality, Carnality, and Sordidness. The book teaches one of the hollow and shameful lives most of the wealthy live. Caught up in selfishness and materiality; they breath only to sate themselves. The top antagonist, Brenda Lost is one of the most loathsome characters I have ever read about. This story was published in the 1930's. However, it is as elucidating about today's world as it was then.

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