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A Handful of Dust (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)

by Evelyn Waugh (Author) "'Was anyone hurt?' 'No one I am thankful to say,' said Mrs Beaver, 'except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass..." (more)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics; New Ed edition (7 Dec 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141183969
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141183961
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 8,386 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #3 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Waugh, Evelyn

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Product Description

Product Description

In his elegant, malicious prose, Evelyn Waugh satirizes British society as he saw it over three decades. From Work Suspended, where Plant, a writer of detective fiction, puts his incomplete novel in a drawer until such time as he can finish it (that is to say after the war), to Basil Seal Rides Again, in which the hero of Black Mischief defeats the children of the Sixties, these stories encompass much of the social milieu of the twentieth century. The volume also includes the fragment Charles Ryder's Schooldays, which sketches the background to the narrator of Brideshead Revisited.


About the Author

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of Europe, the Near East, Africa and tropical America, and published a number of travel books, including Labels (1930), Remote People, (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934) and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936). In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. When the Going was Good and The Loved One preceded Men at Arms, which came out in 1952, the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour' trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961. He died in 1966.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
'Was anyone hurt?' 'No one I am thankful to say,' said Mrs Beaver, 'except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof into the paved court. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Novel from a Master Satirist, 27 Jun 2004
By Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: A Handful of Dust (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
You know that when you see a passage from Eliot's THE WASTE LAND appearing before the title page that you are not headed for 300 pages of fun and games. Sure there is the usual stock of Waugh humor, wit, and snappy dialogue to be had here, but this ranks as amongst his darkest novels. It's tragicomedy at its finest. It's also one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever read, perfect in pitch, cadence, wording, razor sharp characterization, mood, you name it.

Like a number of his novels, it is set primarily in England, between the wars, bouncing back and forth between London and an Estate in the country. The plot boils down to the break up of a marriage and the decline and fall of the central character, Lord of the manor and eventual "Explorer," Anthony (Tony) Mast.

Tony means well. He really does. It's just that he's so fixated on maintaining Hetton, his hereditary estate, that he doesn't even notice when his lovely wife Brenda engages in an affair with an inconsequential and boorish young society chap to whom Waugh assigns the inglorious name, John Beaver.

Waugh's customary drollery comes to the fore as he depicts the cavalier attitudes towards the affair on the part of Tony's and Brenda's social circle. They are rather like actors in a Restoration play, whose moral compasses have become entirely skewed. Though not as moralistic as some of Waugh's late novels, A HANDFUL OF DUST definitely offers a portrait of a very decadent society, indeed. These are not sympathetic characters. Even the two children who enter into the plot are hardly what one would call likeable.

This novel definitely takes some unexpected turns, leading us eventually to a denouement in the Amazon Jungle. The ending has to rank as one of the greatest in literature.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. The English are the greatest satirists and Waugh was the master of the genre amongst 20th century writers. My only minor quibble is that at times I had a tough time keeping up with names of some of the characters.

I've got a couple more Waugh books on my list, but will go with VILE BODIES next, as it's already on my shelf.

This edition has print large enough that I didn't need my reading glasses. It's the quickest 300 page novel I've ever read. It only took about 6 hrs cover to cover, and I am not a fast reader. I really was so transfixed that I had to read it straight through, which I don't usually do these days.
BEK

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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars And that dust is golden, 27 Nov 2002
Waugh was a wine critic with no equal. He is a satirist with no equal. His eye for social detail could not be crisper, his tongue could not be sharper. At times he will have you writhing with laughter; at times he will have you crying in pain.
As with much of Waugh's work his own life is a weighty influence. What distinguishes this novel from his earlier work is the heavy undercurrent that permeates thoughout. The title of the work is taken from T.S. Eliot's seminal modernist work 'The Waste Land', and that is precisely what Waugh sets out to describe. Although the humour follows on through Waugh's work, this is not the light-hearted jaunt through English polite society of 'Vile Bodies'. On occasion 'A Handful of Dust' is dark and damning.
That said, the work is highly amusing in places. Such a marriage of humour and despair might seem improbable if not impossible. It would be for rank-and-file satirists. Waugh is a class apart.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars tomlindup@hotmail.com, 21 Jan 2006
By Thomas Lindup "tlindup" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: A Handful of Dust [With Ribbon Marker] (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover)
This is a good book, but not without its faults. It is a book that highlights the fragility of what we can often take for granted.Tony Last is happy with the life he leads in his country pile. He performs his paternalistic duties with the natural applomb of those whose whole existence has been geared to the day he will inherit. His relationship is apparently the envy of his social set in London. His wife is intelligent, vivacious, beautiful and totally committed to him and their son, John. But all is not what it seems. This seemingly perfect relationship is tested by a particularly objectionable individual, if only due to his mediocrity, and the havoc he wreaks (and in his weak passivity appears to have no moral qualms about) to a relationship we are all gunning for. The lack of emotion of the protagonists is simulataneously admirable and nauseating. So far so good. However, the two faults in the book relate to the rather bizarre description of a journey to Brazil which is both unconvincing and not particularly interesting reading and the two potential endings, both of which are rather unsatisfactory. Still worth it however, as ever, accute and perceptive writing that forces you to come down on one side or the other.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Gothic v Exotic
Infinitely depressing tale if you adhere to the original ending of how poorly people can treat each other even in the best of families. Read more
Published 6 months ago by D. Astley-cooper

5.0 out of 5 stars More brutal satire from Waugh
Having enjoyed Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies (Penguin Modern Classics) and Decline and Fall (Penguin Modern Classics) I came to this in the same spirit, but it isn't the same. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Jonathan Carr

5.0 out of 5 stars As Good As it Gets: Surreal, Amoral, Aristocratic Decadence

"And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will... Read more
Published on 28 Jul 2007 by prisrob

1.0 out of 5 stars Blinded by Brideshead
Oh dear. To me this is a very poor effort, weakly conceived around a 'theoretically' pivotal sentence where the main female character confuses the death of her son with... Read more
Published on 15 Jan 2006

5.0 out of 5 stars I cannot improve upon the first reviewer.
I re-read it recently, 20 years after discovering a hilarious novel.
This time it was much more than that; tragi-comic, and a masterpiece. AVOID THE FILM! Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2004 by pavano

3.0 out of 5 stars A Handful of Chapters.
Ultimately, for a writer like Evelyn Waugh who had magic in almost everything in he wrote I found this book a bit disappointing and that is only because of the way he ends the... Read more
Published on 18 Nov 2003 by P J Taylor

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