A Handful of Dust

From the back of the book: After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy and savage irony, A Handful of Dust captures the irresponsible mood of the 'crazy and sterile generation' between the wars. The breakdown of the Last marriage is a painful, comic re-working of Waugh's own divorce, and a symbol of the disintegration of society.


Over the weekend I had one of those awful moments where you start a book you're just not in the mood for. Therefore, I've stopped reading The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh but the thing is, I love Waugh! Instead of putting you off Waugh forever (because I know I'm just that influential...), I thought I'd review one my favourites of his.

The blurb is entirely accurate and is designed to attract Waugh-ophiles but it doesn't get across the sinister turn that the book takes about half-way through. Nicholas Lezard of the Guardian puts it well: "One of the twentieth century's most chilling and bitter novels and one of its best." Waugh revealed that the ending to the book originally existed as a separate short story and this ending, without ruining it, left my heart thumping and feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It's just so good! This short story having already been published in the American press, however, meant that Waugh had to provide a different ending to the original US edition, which was much less sinister.

Waugh is a brilliantly intelligent and darkly comic writer who often takes a critical and satirical look at society, and no more so does he do this than in A Handful of Dust. Satire, comedy, society, darkness, it's got it all and a great plot on top of it.

For interest, the title itself comes from another fantastic and famous inter-war piece of writing: T.S.Eliot's The Wasteland:

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 show you fear in a handful of dust.

This gets 8.5/10
(so much more than an '8')