Waugh's satirical take on the 'bright young people' of 1920s London, for whom he clearly felt a kind of amused contempt. He takes on the aged too, and no doubt to know him at the time was to feature in some capacity in his books. Not sure I would have liked him, but I like his style. ( )

I'm not much one for British humor, but I must admit that Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh was a really enjoyable book.

Set in the 1920's the novel revolves around the madcap adventures of Adam Symes and his on again off again fiance Nina Blount. On the surface, the story of these characters is very amusing, but underlying their zany escapades is a sense of hopelessness and lack of direction felt by the Bright Young People.

This sentiment culminates in a nightmarish road race in which the story's primary party girl Agatha Runcible gets behind the wheel of a race car which careens out of control (much like the character's own lives and the plot of the novel).

Ultimately the Bright Young People cannot identify with anything worth working for or fighting for, and Waugh illustrates this masterfully with his character's cynical treatment of religion, government, marriage, and even patriotism.

The beauty of the novel is that Waugh takes this very bleak view of the world and disguises it within a comical framework so that it seems neither heavy handed nor preachy, merely entertaining. ( )

The eponymous vile bodies belong to the Bright Young People, the Younger Generation, the Lost Generation, the glitterati of London's West End during the Roaring 20's. Waugh gives us humorous vignettes of their lifestyle, centered on the rising and falling fortunes of Adam Fenwick-Symes and Nina Blount. Their love story, they themselves and their Mayfair crowd are caricatures of reality, accenting the shallowness of their behavior which mirrors the hollowness of their lives. They reject the world they inherited from the older generation, a world shaped by The Great War and its aftermath.

The link between the shallow and the hollow is revealed by Father Rothschild S.J. He admits to knowing few young people, but he seems to have their pulse. He summarizes their philosophy to Prime Minister Outrage: Not, "If a thing's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well," as the Church has always espoused, but "if a thing's not worth doing well, it's not worth doing at all."

Outrage thinks "What a darned silly principle." Rothschild says, ". . . for all we know it may be the right one." The problem that Outrage finds with this philosophy is "what would one do?" Exactly. The BYP are busy not doing, he and his generation are busy doing. To what effect? Well, Outrage, as P.M., is not even aware that war is imminent and must be told by Rothschild. Who, actually, is in charge?

Father Rothschild S.J. is a curious character. We meet him on the Channel crossing as the book opens. He travels with a borrowed suitcase containing "a false beard and a school atlas and gazetteer heavily annotated." He carries a "diplomatic laissez-passer" and knows by sight everyone who comes on board. He has prescient knowledge of Outrage's return to power, the fate of the Japanese ambassador and the coming war. He demonstrates knowledge of spy craft at Lady Metroland's party. He leaves the party at Anchorage House to disappear into the night on a motorcycle, with "many people to see and much business to transact before he went to bed." He is the one character in Vile Bodies who is purposeful in his actions but his pursuits do not appear that Fatherly.

What of Adam and Nina? Much of the humor in Vile Bodies comes from their on-again, off-again relationship. They must have an income to marry, and it seems always just beyond their grasp. Adam develops and loses his literary ticket, finds and loses his journalist's ticket, and plays cat-and-mouse with the drunken Major who may or may not have track winnings that will make his fortune. Nina's fortune rests with her bemused father, Colonel Blount, who favors Adam only in his absence and finally squanders the family fortune on a whim. Will they ever get together?

Rest assured, there is a happy ending. Adam's issue will live in a financially stable home, far from the war. Adam has fulfilled the legacy of his namesake. ( )

If British madcap is your thing then this is the novel for you. ( )

I received this as my Book Club secret Santa in 2007, and got round to reading it almost a year later. Really enjoyed it, found it very funny and fast moving. It is very evocative of its time (the Twenties), whilst at the same time very easy to relate to the present day with its gossip columns and parties. The central character, Adam, keeps coming into money and then losing it again, and his engagement is on again, off again in response to this, but really the plot seems fairly incidental to the whole whirl of giddy fun. It sobers up a little towards the end with death and war creeping into the story, but even these are made to seem fairly superficial as portrayed through the eyes of the Bright Young People. ( )