Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

[Janet]

 

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

 

The ‘blurb’

The scene and climate of this witty satirical novel give full scope to Evelyn Waugh’s sardonic observation. Here again, as in Decline and Fall, we are in the fashionable Mayfair of the twenties, when the Bright Young Things exercised their inventive mind and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade. The plot is an adroit jigsaw of amusing situations; the characters a vivid assortment of those who inhabit the social domain that lies between Park Lane and Bond Street.

 

Deeply satirical, Vile Bodies epitomises the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, the rich, privileged young men and women who live their hedonistic lives to excess.

 

Adam and Nina are in love, but there is a problem. Adam has no money to speak of and therefore can’t settle on Nina. Throughout the course of the novel, this story weaves and twists and Adam finds riches and loses them again… a number of times! However, the story is about so much more than Adam and Nina’s relationship.

 

My favourite part of the story was when Adam and Nina and friends attend a motor race - very funny, but the consequences for Agatha Runcible are not so good - such a funny section that had me chuckling aloud at times!

 

The ending of the novel seems at odds to the rest of the story

as the mood changes and Adam find himself fighting in the war, but I think this just reflects the way the period ended and the way that society changed in the period after the war.

 

 

I think I perhaps should have read Decline and Fall first, as it introduces some of the characters in this novel.

 

The paperback is 256 pages long and is published by Penguin. The ISBN number is 978-0141182872.

[Freewheeling Andy]

I read this ages ago. If I remember right, the mood changes through the book, and the ending is slightly at odds, as Waugh's opinions shifted dramatically through the writing of it. He became far more cynical about the BYTs of the 20s, and thought of them in less and less of a positive light, so the jokey first half becomes slightly darker mooded than the second.

 

I don't remember it with anything like the fondness I have for either Scoop or Brideshead Revisited. But it wasn't a bad book.

[Janet]

I can't say I really noticed the mood darkening thorough the book, even the bit

where Agatha dies seemed humourous rather than bleak to me!

 

 

Of the two, I definitely preferred Brideshead. I really want to read Scoop soon.