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andreablythe 's review for:
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
A story of selfishness and cruelty, as Mrs Last begins to have an affair with a financially broke young man. She thinks of nothing of having the affair and then of funding the relationship by asking for alimony from a hoped for divorce, even if it means demanding her husband, Tony Last, to sell his beloved house to pay for it. In response, Tony decides to take an ill-fated trip to the Amazon.
After reading, I put down the book and thought, "Wow. I don't even know how to respond to this." I still don't really, beyond a general sense of enjoyment. The story unfolds in crisp straightforward prose that doesn't linger on emotional reasoning. It's never really clear why characters make the decisions they make (except maybe in the case of Tony); they just simply announce they want to do something and then do it. I wouldn't say that I liked any of the characters, but the scenes were often funny and the book was an easy read. Also, Tony Last's fate was so terrifying as to actually give me chills. It was totally unexpected and really made the book something more than just a wryly humorous story about marriage and divorce. I'm still thinking about it.
After reading, I put down the book and thought, "Wow. I don't even know how to respond to this." I still don't really, beyond a general sense of enjoyment. The story unfolds in crisp straightforward prose that doesn't linger on emotional reasoning. It's never really clear why characters make the decisions they make (except maybe in the case of Tony); they just simply announce they want to do something and then do it. I wouldn't say that I liked any of the characters, but the scenes were often funny and the book was an easy read. Also, Tony Last's fate was so terrifying as to actually give me chills. It was totally unexpected and really made the book something more than just a wryly humorous story about marriage and divorce. I'm still thinking about it.