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pkadams 's review for:
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
In my quest to read great books this year, my friend Sarah helped by recommending this Evelyn Waugh novel. Described as Madame Bovary rewritten by Noel Coward, A Handful of Dust, provides a captivating story about society and adultery. The Dickenseque names (Tony Last, John Beaver, Jock, etc.) are fantastic and you know that the scathing pen of Waugh will come down hard when they bungle their privileged lives. Waugh's own defining marriage and divorce leave him with enough material and emotion to provide us with searing commentary. Because of copyright issues with publishers, Waugh at first had to write an alternate ending for the book since his intended ending (now considered The Ending) had been published as a short-story a few years earlier. The ending is creepy and a bit too metaphorical for my taste. The alternative is more realistic and quite frankly more tragic because Tony Last as his name implies will be the last to turn to adultery and Waugh ends it poignantly with his sin of omission to his wife as "the train sped through the darkness toward Hetton."