Book Review: A Handful of Dust

[got_quiet]

Title: A Handful of Dust
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Genre: Satire
Content Warnings: Racism, including slurs and native savage stereotypes.

A Handful of Dust is a social satire originally published in the 1930s by Evelyn Waugh. The plot revolves an affair that Brenda Last has with John Beaver, as Brenda's husband Tony is completely oblivious and all of their society friends look on.

With one massive caveat I enjoyed it a lot. It's a caustic satire and on a superficial level fits neatly into the genre of Everyone Fucking Sucks. The absurdity of the plot and the playful way that Waugh lets the characters represent themselves as reasonable while the reader thinks, nah, you also suck, elevates it from that cliche.

( Spoilerish Review )

Big Ending Spoiler here

And then there's the ending. WTF was that ending? Again, spoilers for a 90+ year old book, but in the end Tony finds himself at the edge of death and disaster multiple times while being led deeper into the wilderness by someone who has no right to be leading anything. I was on the edge of my seat wondering how they’d fare, if the disease would kill him, or the constantly provoked locals, or some thing else entirely, and every time it seemed like things were getting better they’d just get worse, until in the end he stumbles, delirious with fever, into a literal horror scenario and becomes the permanent captive of a fucked up European who tricks a rescue party into thinking Tony is dead so that he will stay forever and read him Dickens. The implication in the end is that he ends up dying there, eventually, but perhaps of old age 30 years into the future, who knows.

I read this book while on a plane, and the last few scenes had me worked up enough that I was dying to get up and pace and couldn’t, which compounded the emotional reaction. I desperately wanted to turn to the person sitting next to me and ask, "Have you read this book, and if so, can we please commiserate about the ending?" But I did not do this and instead stewed in place. I felt like I was simply out of the habit of reading books that do not get tied up in the way that feels obligatory for genre fiction.

I will admit that I have a strong stomach for the bigotry that permeated literature from this time period. It also helps (???) that for the most part, you don't get jump scared with the blunt stuff until the very end of the story. I haven't read any other Waugh to know if this is one of his best as the introduction says, but I would say that it was better than 90% of what I end up reading nowadays.

(This is also crossposted on my blog)