A Handful of Dust

Evelyn Waugh's powers of prose were never more on display than in this shameless, nasty, witty novel that reads like lightning and scorches like flame.At one point near the end, our sort-of-hero, Tony Last, learns about native customs in the Amazon by a dicey explorer named Dr. Messinger: "They buried me up to the neck in mud and all the women of the tribe spat on my head. Then we ate a toad and a snake and a beetle and after that I was a blood-brother."Not exactly enticing, but compared to the culture Tony has thus far been immersed in, London between the wars, it sounds too lovely to pass up. "A Handful Of Dust" is as dark a critique of civilized mores as one can imagine, and though it comes off at times as far-fetched, the view of life is even more disturbing, and blackly humorous, for being true.A rural nobleman who only wants to live in his Gothic manor with his family, Tony finds himself the victim of his wife Brenda's sudden bout of unfaithfulness. She sets off, rather inexplicably, with a Mommy-coddled cheapskate named Beaver. For her, it's something to do. For her cosmopolitan circle, it's a cause not for concern but merry gossip. "You know, you're causing a great deal of trouble," her sister Marjorie confides. "You've taken London's only spare man."If cruel social satire is your cup of tea, you won't go wrong with "A Handful Of Dust." Waugh is not working from the heart here, but from the spleen, but once you allow for the fact caring is out the window for the reader and the cast, what you get is a pretty thorough and, in its upside-down way, satisfying exposition on the petty viciousness of cheating hearts. If you've ever come across a real heartbreaker in life, and who hasn't, this book offers a perverse form of solace.While Brenda's heartlessness is milked in depth, it's really the enabling connivance of her kinfolk and friends that Waugh sends up so masterfully. It's what makes his novel a treat. Tony, we understand, is a stick and a bore, but he not only cares for his wife but trusts her blindly, which makes her adultery and her circle's abetting of it particularly cruel. No doubt to point up the amoral nature of secular London's high society, the Catholic Waugh gives us dialogue that ricochets back heavily on the speakers, as they wonder why Tony doesn't just accept his losses, sell his manor to satisfy Brenda's exorbitant alimony demands, and not be such a bore about it.The drawback in this book, as other reviewers here note, is in the ending, not because it is sour but so out of left field. Even though there's a nice juxtaposition of the Amazon and London, Tony's strange expedition, and its resolution, don't add to the proceedings so much as push them in another direction that seems to add Waugh himself to Last's already-thick stable of tormentors. It's not a bad ending, but it doesn't maintain the drama or the subtlety of what passed before.But there's plenty to enjoy here, like the dialogue, the odd mix of characters, and sublime moments of balmy nonsense, like the vicar who recycles ill-fitting sermons from a long-ago India sojourn. Waugh writes about Tony's manor with a zest that makes architecture seem witty, while even the harshest moments have a cold, brave beauty about them. This is a book difficult to put down, and impossible to forget.

This novel begins in fine comic form in a world that might come straight out of P. G. Wodehouse; it ends (more or less) in the jungles of British Guiana, in the world of Joseph Conrad or Graham Greene. The journey between one and the other is always interesting and often amusing, but it lacks internal logic. This is a book that its author began with total mastery, but did not quite know how to end.The Wodehouse world is one of 1930s high society: luncheon and cocktail parties in town, weekend house-parties in the country. The "Bertie Wooster" character here, known as Beaver and deliberately vapid, basically waits around for invitations to make up the numbers at one of these gatherings. His club, Brats, might as well be Wodehouse's Drones. Due to an error, Beaver turns up alone one weekend at the ancestral home of Tony Last (a squire very much devoted to his house and village) and his wife Lady Brenda. Before long, Brenda and Beaver are in an affair, and the book truly begins.The result, as William Boyd describes it in his excellent introduction to the Everyman edition (though NOT to be read before the book itself), is "MADAME BOVARY rewritten by Noel Coward." The comic tone persists almost all through the novel, and it includes many scenes that are hilariously funny (for example, the Vicar who recycles sermons first preached thirty years before in India without adjusting any of their topical details). But Waugh is less loving as a comedian, more satirical, more ruthless with his characters. About halfway through the book, something occurs that absolutely does not belong in a comedy. The jolt is shocking, but the truly horrible thing is that it hardly shakes the comic mechanisms at all. Despite occasional glimpses of true feeling, one thing continues to lead to another on the plot level, dictated more by circumstance than by character. There are still many funny moments, but one is conscious now of the author manipulating his people, less to let them grow than to pay them back.And so to that ending in the Amazon jungle. The Everyman Library edition has the advantage of including the alternative ending that Waugh wrote for American serialization, since the short story that he remodeled as the final section of the British book had already appeared in America under a different publisher. This alternative is much shorter, and it is not entirely clear where it would have been grafted on, but in its acerbic brevity it is much more true to the prevailing tone of the book than the longer version. Brilliant though Waugh's Amazon conclusion is, it also seems arbitrary and willful. But in retrospect, so is the entire book, so is the nature of Waugh's comic genius. He may be a Wodehouse or a Coward -- superior to them even -- but he is no Greene and certainly no Flaubert.

This is an important novel of Evelyn Waugh’s; marking a much more serious, darkly witty and sharply observant style, from his earlier, comic novels. It is widely suggested that this novel was largely the result of his first wife, Evelyn Gardner, or ‘She-Evelyn,’ leaving him for another man after a year of marriage. If so, Waugh certainly had his revenge , as he bitterly skewers his ex-wife, and her lover, in print.Brenda and Tony Last have been married for five, or six, years, when we meet them. Tony adores his ancestral house, Hetton, his young son, John Andrew and his wife. Brenda, it is soon apparent, is bored to tears. When John Beaver - a scrounging young man, who lounges around bars hoping to be brought a drink, has no job and little income, but is a useful ‘spare man,’ ready to drop everything for a free lunch, or dinner party - takes up a half meant invitation for the weekend, Tony is appalled at his arrival. Apologetically, he leaves Beaver to be baby-sat by Brenda and that, without doubt, is a mistake. Although Tony is blithely unaware of what is going on, pretty soon half of London is aghast at their affair. While Beaver rises in their esteem, Brenda takes a flat and begins to attend every party in London.This is very much a book of two halves and (a little like “Brideshead Revisited”) the first half is much better than the second. While the first half of Brideshead is so sublime it makes up for the second being not quite so wonderful, this novel does not manage to carry off the trick quite so well. The second half of this was taken from a short story Waugh wrote and, certainly, there is much biographical material in this novel – as well as a truly shocking moment (you’ll know it when you get to it).Waugh not only turns his vengeful, bitter words against his ex-wife, and her lover (John Heygate), but his satirises his own lack of knowledge about their affair. It is sharply satirical, cruel, vicious and unbearable in parts – the ‘shocking moment,’ takes away any sympathy for Brenda (not that she is particularly sympathetic anyway) and how John Heygate ever showed his face in public again, I have no idea. Still, in parts this is brilliant. I am immediately moved to read the latest biography of Waugh, “A Life Revisited,” and never get bored of this, most brilliant, author.

A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1934, is the story of country squire Tony Last, who, after the collapse of his marriage, takes a trip into the South American jungle.I found this a difficult book to get my head around, but it wasn’t hard work to read. Far from it. While there were many jumps in viewpoint, these shifts were so deft that the book read as easily as a country house comedy, which is where I suspected we were as the book opened. Then Tony’s son dies in a riding accident, and it becomes clear that country house comedy isn’t what we are dealing with. The humour takes a dark turn. For example, we have the dreadful Jenny Abdul Akbar getting muddled about the casualty’s name:‘Quick,’ she whispered, ‘Tell me. I can’t bear it. Is it death?’Jock nodded. ‘Their little boy … kicked by a horse.’‘Little Jimmy.’‘John.’‘John … dead. It’s too horrible.’So what to make of it. I had a look at what other people said about the book. There was much debate about Waugh’s conversion to Catholicism which was on-going at the time of writing. Apparently the critic Frank Kermode thought A Handful Of Dust portrayed the awful, frivolous world which exists without religion, specifically the Catholic religion. This seemed ridiculous. The idea that the characters in A Handful Of Dust might have avoided their collective disappointments if only they had converted to Catholicism, was far fetched to say the least.Besides what good novel has ever been propaganda for a particular religion? So I forgot about Catholicism, and went back to A Handful Of Dust and my reaction to it.A Handful Of Dust features polished lives hiding all kinds of depth, whether it’s depth of resentment, hurt and depravity on the one hand, or beauty, comfort and stability on the other. Sometimes superficiality is painful, and sometimes it’s light relief from pain. During Tony’s post break-up jungle trek, he falls ill with a fever, and discovers that both poisons and medicines are to be found amongst the tropical trees and flowers. Similarly, back in England, superficiality can be a medicine or a poison depending on how you prepare the raw material.Although my reading about the background of A Handful Of Dust had mostly been a matter of wading through paragraphs debating Catholicism versus humanism and so on, there was one thing I did discover that interested me. Waugh was an admirer of his contemporary Anthony Powell, author of A Dance To The Music Of Time. Powell is one of my favourite writers. He had a great ability to take the surface elements of life - English life in particular - and plumb hidden depths. I realised that Waugh might be seen as a reluctant Powell, playing with the same themes whilst appearing more uneasy about them. Rather than seeking a religious shortcut to the apparently profound, Waugh might have done better to have gone all-in with the apparently superficial, embracing and enjoying it for good or ill, which is the secret of the wonderful A Dance To The Music Of Time.Maybe Evelyn Waugh wrote a good novel despite himself. I much prefer Powell’s writing, but I still enjoyed A Handful of Dust, which remains primarily a novel rather than a demand that we look at the world through the lens of a particular religion.

England in the 1930s, upper class society, the London "Season",exclusive Gentlemen's clubs, Country House parties, infidelities, betrayal, scandal and gossip, a lost world made real and still relevant by the pen of Evelyn Waugh. Half way through the book after a shocking and tragic episode, the narrative seems to go off on a tangent almost as if the writer had lost his way and grafted on a sea voyage and an exploration in Brazil. Waugh was recently got divorced, an acrimonious and bitter business which comes out in the novel and he travelled to South America a few years previiously to writing "A Handful of Dust". He had written a short story based in the Brazil jungle and includes it again in this novel. Under the elegance of his writing this all fits seemlessly together, a classic English novel and excellent reading.

This is a relatively short novel about a loveless marriage, a shallow affair and a neglected son. I watched an adaptation of A Handful of Dust a few years ago, and it was one of the (very) rare times where I felt it was better than the book. Nonetheless, it's definitely worth reading if you like Evelyn Waugh's other novels.There's one scene, in particular, that's unforgettable, where Brenda mistakes her son's name for her lover's. It's a good novel, but I feel, with a bit more of Waugh's attention, it could have been a great one.

I read this as a teenager and decided to read it again. I understood it better second time round and could relate to it being middle aged and having witnessed some of the types of behaviour described in the book. I won't describe the plot as other reviewers have done that but it is well written and enjoyable with a good story.