Skip to main content

review: Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh


Pages: 320

Original date of publication: 1958

My edition: 1999 (Back Bay Books)

Why I decided to read: I was inspired to read it after reading Bright Young People

How I acquired my copy: Local library sale, November 2009

I bought this book a year ago, after a member on Shelfari recommended it to me. It came back on my radar after reading Bright Young People, DJ Taylor’s biography of the Bright Young things of 1920s English society. Vile Bodies is a parody of that group, and several characters in this book are clearly exaggerated versions of real people that Evelyn Waugh knew. Our main character, Adam Fenwick-Symes, is clearly a projection of Waugh, on the fringe of the society that he writes about.

Vile Bodies is a very funny, highly stylized version of 1920s and ‘30s society. On one hand, these are highly glamorous people Waugh is writing about; on the other, they’re superficial and empty. As with most satirical writing, this book tends to be very over-the-top at times, but that’s one of the things I really enjoyed about this book.

It’s a very fast-paced novel, and most of the dialogue takes place over telephones. You get this kind of “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” feeling about the pace of this book; miss a sentence or even a word, and you’re completely lost. In many ways, the tone of this book reflects the people Waugh is trying to satirize. I’m not sure that I completely “get” the book, but it’s one of those books I should re-read in order to totally understand it.

Labels:

Comments

Shelley said…
A friend of mine who just started a book blog just reviewed this book, and it sounds pretty unique. I still haven't read Brideshead Revisited yet, which I want to get to first.
If you want to check out the other review, here's the link:
http://professorreading.blogspot.com/2010/10/vile-bodies-by-evelyn-waugh.html
November 9, 2010 at 7:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.
194 comments
Read more

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...
115 comments
Read more

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...
12 comments
Read more