Not up to what I expected from Waugh. Interesting story, typical Waugh satire, but "uneven" and quite dull in places. ( )

The writing is excellent. Waugh is scathing about the world he describes, yet he does so with such light, satirical humour. However, the characters are so odious I didn’t want to know them and don’t want to think about them now that the book is behind me.

Furthermore, I found the structure very bizarre. Two thirds of the novel is set in England and centres on the vapid life of English ‘society’, then in the final third the husband sets off for the deepest, darkest Amazon jungles with a stranger he chances to meet. The stranger has some absolutely crackpot idea and the two go off very poorly prepared into the jungle where the hero and the stranger both perish. This final section is actually a short story Waugh happened to have lying around and tacked onto the end, and it reads just like that – the final section is alien and unrelated to the first section of the novel.

If this is his best book I'm not sure I'll be on the lookout for more Waugh. ( )

Goodness. I read one review here that completely missed the satire. Waugh is brutal to the British aristocracy in decline. An opportunist takes advantage of a couple of those folk with devastating results. We aren't allowed to sympathize too much with them, though, because their essential cluelessness (societal inbreeding might be a better term) causes them to make some really, really bad decisions. A cautionary tale for those who might misbehave out of boredom.

So what does "hard cheese on Tony" refer to? Hard cheese apparently dates back at least to Victorian times, meaning "bad luck". There's plenty of that to go around... ( )

One of many assigned readings, this one. I found it dull and pointless -- when it wasn't downright annoying. This is one of those stories where all the characters get on your nerves, and you're just waiting for everyone to get cholera and die. ( )

A clueless husband, a heartless wife, and a broken marriage after a tragic loss make up this well-known and well-told timeless story set in 1930's England. Ah, the English. So much depends on how one is viewed by society. Brenda Last has the approval of her aristocratic cronies, even when she pursues her boy-toy John Beaver in London, while her husband and son remain on the family's country estate. Tony is oblivious to her fling as he tends to business and his beloved old house, which is as outdated as he is. However, when confronted with an imminent divorce, boring ol' Tony surprises everyone (including this reader) with his adventurous retreat.

What an odd ending. I missed jolly old England. I think "The Man Who Liked Dickens" made a great short story, but seemed like a tacked-on ending to me. The alternative ending was much more in character with the rest of the book, though it fell flat. This was my first experience with Waugh. I loved his tongue-in-cheek way with words and forgive him for these bizarre endings. ( )

This is in my opinion the most tragic of Waugh's novels, focusing on the cruelty of gender relations and the disintegration of the aristocracy in the topsy-turvy twenties and thirties. Protagonist Tony Last is the space case English peer crushed flat by the several boots of reality. ( )

Fairly bland book, written in an easy style with some humorous parts. I find the lifestyle of the landed gentry in this era mildly irritating. My favourite part of the novel was Tony's trip to Brazil, and what happened to him there. SO much better than the Alternative Ending which the American magazine insisted upon! ( )

The Lasts live a quiet life on their estate with few visitors and these days they rarely go to London. Tony's pride and joy is his family's Gothic manor, with rooms decked out in Authurian themes (Morgan Le Fay and Galahad, for instance), and it's dreadfully, dreadfully out of fashion. Brenda just wants more company, either in London or elegant parties at home. She develops an infatuation for a young man with no social graces, plenty of faults and very little money, much to the amusement of her social set. Despite her knowledge that it is an unwise move, Brenda makes excuses to go to London as often as possible to escape her dreary husband and the dank manor temporarily. ( )

A satire of British life by turns acerbic and bizarre. "Gosford Park" meets "Apocalypse Now" in this comedy of manners and morals. An expansion of Waugh's short story, "The Man Who Liked Dickens." ( )

The chilling climax of this book I had read many years earlier in the guise of a short story called "The Man Who Loved Dickens." It was a deliciously creepy feeling to find it lurking in this context. ( )

The Lasts, Tony and Brenda, and their manor in Hetton. The manor is a drain on their income but they stubbornly refuse to give it up. Brenda begins an affair with Beaver, a leech on the upper crust of London society. When Tony and Brenda experience a family tragedy, Brenda tries to divorce Tony to marry Beaver. Tony refuses, unwilling to give up Hetton to fund Brenda and Beaver's new life. When Beaver learns of the prospect of a meager life, he quickly loses interest in Brenda. Tony embarks on an adventure to Brazil where his party is lost and he contracts a fever. Nursed back to health by a half-breed native and then kept captive, forced to read Charles Dickens aloud to his captor. When Tony is declared dead, Hetton passes to his cousins.

Often very comedic and light in tone, the novel is ultimately a tragedy, detailing the lives of Tony, Beaver, and Brenda as they spiral out of control. Waugh seems to compare these characters different paths to destruction to tell us that fate holds what it will for us, no matter what path we choose. Good, easy, enjoyable read, even with the darker under layers of the story

4 bones!!!! ( )

A HANDFUL OF DUST satirizes that stratum of English life where all the characters have money, but lack practically every other credential. Murderously urbane, it depicts the breakup of a marriage in the London gentry, where the errant wife suffers from terminal boredom and becomes enamored of a social parasite and professional lunch-goer.

The depravity and polished savagery of these characters offer an opportunity for Waugh's rapier wit and subtly to "show us fear in a handful of dust."

"Waugh's technique is relentless and razor-edged...by any standard it is super satire." ( )

The characters in this book seemed like the irresponsible Bright Young Things of Waugh's Vile Bodies -- grown up, but not grown wiser. Brenda Last is an entirely amoral and frivolous character right out of the earlier book, and Tony Last's fate in the South American jungle is subtler than the events in Vile Bodies, but equally appalling and bizarre . ( )

I never met Evelyn Waugh but I always feel as though we’d have gotten along well because we both dislike children so very much. ( )

The author paints a poignant tale of immorality, Carnality, and Sordidness. The book teaches one of the hollow and shameful lives most of the wealthy live. Caught up in selfishness and materiality; they breath only to sate themselves. The top antagonist, Brenda Lost is one of the most loathsome characters I have ever read about. This story was published in the 1930's. However, it is as elucidating about today's world as it was then. ( )

It starts innocuously enough; gentlemen and ladies having fun. As the book carries on, the characters become stranger and the plot more dramatic, until at the end the main characters have all but disappeared, replaced by their likes, ready to make the same mistakes. A clever and disturbing look at how simple decisions can cause major life changes. ( )

Written with a dry wit and a cynical view of social mores, this book starts as light drawing-room comedy but turns midway into something darker and deeper, though it never stops being laugh-out-loud funny. A woman from society's upper echelon embarks on an affair with a rather worthless young man, while her decent if somewhat boring husband is left to search for meaning and consolation, eventually losing himself in the Amazonian rainforest, where he becomes, bizarrely, enslaved to an illiterate who is obsessed with Dickens. Waugh's writing is keenly observant yet also surprisingly passionate. Many people consider this book, with reason, to be his best work. ( )

The story of Lady Brenda and Mr. Tony Last in 1930's British society. A stinging satire of the upper class, where stories don't always have happy endings. ( )

www.thebookpond.se ( )

Waugh gives us a bleak yet blackly comic account of a failing marriage between the aristocratic Tony and Brenda Last, set in a climate of genteel social barbarism.

Moving between the worlds of sham-gothic English feudalism and decadent inter-war London society, Waugh's characters act with increasing selfishness and amorality. In the aftermath of the Lasts' breakup, we are given a disturbing vision of where such behaviour leads.

This is a starker book than his more exuberant, earlier novels 'Scoop' and 'Decline and Fall', though still with plenty of darkly absurdist humour. ( )

The first book by Waugh I've ever read. It was a quick read, Waugh's style is nice and light. the characters ar detestable, mainly for their shallowness and lack of morals in the case of Brenda and Beaver, and cowardice in the case of Tony. The best bit about the book was the creepy Mr. Todd at the end, he certainly freaked me out a bit. ( )

You can't beat Waugh for prose style and QLPC (Qualiy Laughs Per Chapter) ( )