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jmiae 's review for:
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
As contemporary social commentary goes, this is top notch. I wonder how many readers were offended when this first got published. For me, though, it was like reading about the 1930s sequel to the last season of Downton Abbey. At times, I wondered if Julian Fellowes had found some inspiration for Lord Grantham in Tony Last. The depiction of London society and the lifestyle of the British upper class was politely brutal, showing but never describing the cruelty and self-serving of Brenda and the rest of the ridiculous women who prance through the story. The depiction of the 'Indians' and 'blacks' of South America is perhaps less accurate but no less unflattering, and I actually flinched and had to set aside the book at a page where Waugh casually tosses in what is now an wholly unacceptable derogatory term. Sometimes I wonder why I enjoy reading pre-War English literature so much, given how women and minority groups are so often depicted. Then I remember that my favourite English writers from that period are not men but women, and I feel a bit relieved. Yes, the particular women in this novel were pretty awful, but how many female authors wrote and published books in the 1930s about women who were treated badly by their asshole husbands but were unable to divorce so spent their inheritance on an adventure abroad? Probably none, because women's rights. But I desist.
As a reader, I generally struggle to connect with characters when they are presented but we never gain access into their inner thoughts and feelings. Perhaps this is why I am not hugely fond of reading plays. This novel was no different, in that respect. However, I cannot but admire Waugh's ability to depict English society and the strange way of well-bred savagery that was perhaps unique to the British upper class at the time. Once the story ventured away from British shores, I found it slightly more cumbersome and clumsy, almost like Dickens suddenly writing about settlers on the Oregon Trail halfway through Great Expectations. But perhaps that disjointedness was intentional, and I'm sure there are some literary critics who argue that there is some metaphorical reasoning in that plot development. It's just one of those things that the each reader must consider and come to their own conclusion about, I suppose.
As a reader, I generally struggle to connect with characters when they are presented but we never gain access into their inner thoughts and feelings. Perhaps this is why I am not hugely fond of reading plays. This novel was no different, in that respect. However, I cannot but admire Waugh's ability to depict English society and the strange way of well-bred savagery that was perhaps unique to the British upper class at the time. Once the story ventured away from British shores, I found it slightly more cumbersome and clumsy, almost like Dickens suddenly writing about settlers on the Oregon Trail halfway through Great Expectations. But perhaps that disjointedness was intentional, and I'm sure there are some literary critics who argue that there is some metaphorical reasoning in that plot development. It's just one of those things that the each reader must consider and come to their own conclusion about, I suppose.