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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A cute bit of Waugh fluff.
It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the author of this book is the same person who wrote A Handful of Dust. It's not bad though - I understand that this was Waugh's first novel. I would give it a 4, but the comic absurdity was sometimes just plain silly.
I did enjoy this book, although I felt that by the very end, I still didn't really know the main character Paul Pennyfeather. I have a feeling that's what Waugh was going for, as the story is about a man whose life seems to be the result of a series of unfortunate events over which he has no control. Anyway, the book was entertaining, but I definitely enjoyed Brideshead Revisited much more.
challenging
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Racial slurs
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Decline And Fall is Waugh at his most piercing, polemical and disturbing. The cast of irredeemable characters behaving outrageously and voicing opinions of such venom and prejudice makes for unsettling - yet hilarious - reading. Unlike lesser haters, Waugh doesn't secretly love or admire them, he hates them all. It's difficult to unpick the authorial voice from the ridiculous views of some of the most preposterous protagonists, and this is the charm of the work - you won't read it and feel uplifted, in fact you'll be lucky if you don't feel a bit sullied.
It's the outbursts that are the best, such as the vicar commenting that an interest in liturgical matters in the laity is usually a sign of the onset of madness, or Dr Fagan's rant about the Welsh - "we can trace almost all of the disasters of English history or the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life...and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging." Can't argue really....
If you think of Waugh as Brideshead, repressed sexuality and country house psychosexual drama, Decline And Fall will disabuse you. One of the most caustic, difficult and unloveable of authors he fathered the decline in deference by portraying the upper classes as demented, sexually dysfunctional, avaricious, stupid and morally bankrupt. It's probably best he's not around to see the celebrity obsessed, Hello/Heat culture of the times, or George Osborne as chancellor....
It's the outbursts that are the best, such as the vicar commenting that an interest in liturgical matters in the laity is usually a sign of the onset of madness, or Dr Fagan's rant about the Welsh - "we can trace almost all of the disasters of English history or the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life...and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging." Can't argue really....
If you think of Waugh as Brideshead, repressed sexuality and country house psychosexual drama, Decline And Fall will disabuse you. One of the most caustic, difficult and unloveable of authors he fathered the decline in deference by portraying the upper classes as demented, sexually dysfunctional, avaricious, stupid and morally bankrupt. It's probably best he's not around to see the celebrity obsessed, Hello/Heat culture of the times, or George Osborne as chancellor....
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Waugh's first book and hailed as a classic of English literature. At once laugh out loud funny and all too real as satire and tragedy mix, witty and scathing in equal part against that peculiar thing, the upper classes, private schools and Oxford. Glancing below the surface of satire and Pennyfeather's story is a tragedy of circumstances, a man in the world of the upper classes without the money to go with it.
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated