schemingreader

I'm sure there isn't a single British person on my flist who hasn't read Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. I only learned of it from watching The Supersizers Eat the Twenties. I thought, "Oh yeah, Evelyn Waugh."

Who knew, first of all, that the novel would totally feed my Mitford mania, which had been safely tranquilized for months and months? They are all over this book, in the most unexpected places. This passage made me laugh unreasonably:

Edward Throbbing stood talking to the eldest daughter of the Duchess of Stayle. She was some inches taller than he and inclined slightly so that, in the general murmur of conversation, she should not miss any of his colonial experiences. She wore a frock such as only Duchesses can obtain for their elder daughters, a garment curiously puckered and puffed up and enriched with old lace at improbable places, from which her pale beauty emerged as though from a clumsily tied parcel.

It's just funny ala Nancy Mitford, and since they were good pals, this isn't surprising--just charming.

This book begins as a lighthearted satire and deteriorates into bitterness. Marriage is doomed to become prostitution, and happy parties to become brutal war. Two of the most comic characters commit suicide with shocking realism. Hints of Waugh's racism and anti-Semitism shadow the text. It all feels amusing, bitter, modern. It was published in 1930, and it seems that it's about Waugh's failing marriage and collapsing world.