The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 27 September 2004
by Evelyn Waugh
In this darkly witty, satirical and ultimately bleak short novel, Evelyn Waugh takes poignant aim at upper class English society in the years after World War 1. Waugh made this social class his most frequent subject (and target), and here his writing is biting, often hilarious, and full of a sort of gentle misanthropy. Tony Last is barely hanging on to his ancestral castle in the English countryside. The family's fortune has more or less dissipated over the generations and as the family has grown, so that Tony doesn't have much left for the building's upkeep. Still, he adores this pile of stone and lumpy mattresses almost as much as he trusts and adores his wife Brenda. She, however, is almost improbably self-absorbed. She falls easy victim to John Beaver, an upper-class sponger. She takes a London flat and Tony is just about the only member of his social circle who doesn't know of the affair. He is so very trusting of his brutally insensitive wife. Up to this point, the book is quite funny in its depiction of these almost uniformly unlikable characters (just about all except the unfortunate Mr. Last). Tragedy strikes the family, though, and Brenda takes it as an opportunity to dump poor Tony. He still only gradually sees the light but responds by taking a pitifully ill-advised exploratory journey to the jungles of South America. What transpires in the last quarter of the novel would make Kafka jealous. The wit remains, but the humor is awash in a depressing feeling of loss. Overall, an entertainingly sharp satire, but one might wonder what it all means in Waugh's universe.
Also by Waugh: [Decline and Fall] [Brideshead Revisited]