Name: Jim Hagan's review of Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Item: Vile Bodies
Rating: 5
Author: Jim Hagan

Evelyn Waugh

In the years following the First World War a new generation emerged, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of 1920s London, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercised their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade. In these pages a vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and the glamorous, aristocratic Nina Blount, hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the hedonistic fulfillment of their desires. Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny satire reveals the darkness and vulnerability beneath the sparkling surface of the high life.

Vile Bodies

Storm

and at last they all went to bed, very tired, but fairly contented, and oh, how they were bitten by bugs all that night.

Then Archie said he was too sleepy to drive any more, so Adam changed places with him and lost the way, and they travelled miles in the wrong direction down a limitless bye-pass road.

In the train Nina said: ‘It's awful to think that I shall probably never, as long as I live, see you dancing like that again all by yourself.’

‘I don't know... it's only that I don't believe that really divine things like that ever do happen... I don't know why… Oh, I do like you so much to-night…’

He gave her his arm with a grace he had acquired many years ago; far away in his sunny little palace, under a great chandelier which scattered with stars of light like stones from a broken necklace, a crimson carpet woven with a pattern of crowned ciphers.

Doug Belshaw

Jim Hagan

Ipek

"So the last Earl of Balcairn went, as they say, to his fathers (who had fallen in many lands and for many causes, as the eccentricities of British Foreign Policy and their own wandering natures had directed them; at Acre and Agincourt and Killiecrankie, in Egypt and America. One had been picked white by fishes as the tides rolled him among the tree-tops of a submarine forest; some had grown black and unfit for consideration under tropical suns; while many of them lay in marble tombs of extravagant design)."

Well, that was something to be slapped in the face with in the middle of all that satire and ennui.

Gavin

Another very dark, funny cattle-prodding of the posh and awful. Lord Monomark, Ginger Littlejohn, Colonel Blount, The Drunken Major, Lottie Crump, The Honourable Agatha Runcible, Miles Malpractice... The Bright Young Things – who are dim – ludicrous wagers – which are won – and the runaway motorcars – oh. Jeeves and Wooster if it had death, teeth, madness and war in. Predicts the next war, or, rather, concocts it in order to punish the frivolous protagonists.

"A wickedly witty and iridescent novel" (Time) from one of England's greatest satirists takes aim at the generation of Bright Young Things that dominated London high society in the 1920s. In the years following the First World War a new generation emerged, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of 1920s London, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercised their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade. In these pages a vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and the glamorous, aristocratic Nina Blount, hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the hedonistic fulfillment of their desires. Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny satire reveals the darkness and vulnerability beneath the sparkling surface of the high life.

Angbeen Abbas

evelyn waugh is a bit of a one-note writer when it comes to his humourous work, so i didn't have high expectations for this one. it was pretty funny in parts, and i like the way it's structured. waugh is pretty good at mocking the upper class, but his absolute disdain for the working-class/black people in the background takes away from the bite of the satire, making it hard to read in parts. not necessarily a book i'd recommend to people as a must-read, but it was fine enough.

Sarah Escorsa

I recently discovered Waugh's works and have been reading all his books I could get my hands on. What I love most about his style is the way he manages to mix comedy, tragedy, satire and cynicism. Although is writing style seems quite light, through he conveys the darker aspects of society. In Vile Bodies he depicts he depicts a colourful array of characters and "bright young things" living a hedonistic, superficial life after the First World War. Although not as deep or tragic as A Handful of Dust, Vile Bodies is quite dark underneath the glittery surface. Waugh acidly describes the absolute vacuity of the characters' lives and the meaninglessness of their artificial pursuits.

The bright young things of Mayfair exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade in this story. The characters are an assortment of those inhabiting the social domain that lies between Park Lane and Bond Street.

Doug Belshaw &
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

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Doug Belshaw &
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh