Vile Bodies (Paperback)

~ (Author) "IT was clearly going to be a bad crossing..." (more)
Key Phrases: drunk major, green bowler, spare driver, Miss Runcible, Colonel Blount, Father Rothschild (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Satiric novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1930. Set in England between the wars, the novel examines the frenetic but empty lives of the Bright Young Things, young people who indulge in constant party-going, heavy drinking, and promiscuous sex. At the novel's end, the realities of the world intrude, with Adam Fenwick-Symes, the protagonist, serving on a battlefield at the onset of another world war. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Product Description

Evelyn Waugh's second novel, "Vile Bodies" is his tribute to London's smart set. It introduces us to society as it used to be but that now is gone forever, and probably for good.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316926116
• ISBN-13: 978-0316926119
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,240 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Typically amusing Waugh, February 23, 2002

By	Westley (Stuck in my head) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I read my first book by Waugh a few months ago and have become a huge fan, "Vile Bodies" being the fourth Waugh book I've read. Although not a sequel to his first novel, "Decline and Fall," "Vile Bodies" includes several of the same characters and has a similar satiric tone. You do not, however, have to have read "Decline and Fall" to enjoy this book.

The main plot concerns a group of young people from London's "bright young generation." They have monied parents and spend most of their time searching for the next party and amusing fad. The protagonist is Adam Fenwick-Symes, a poor writer who manages to live the highlife by being a hanger-on. He is in love with Nina Blount, but cannot marry her because of his economic status. The book chronicles his attempts at making enough money to marry Nina. As with other Waugh books, the characters are passive and do not really do anything, but they manage to have some terrible things happen to them!

The supporting characters are extremely funny, including the modern Agatha Runcible, the revolving line of Prime Ministers, and the various people who become the columnist Mr. Chatterbox. Of course, as with all of the Back Bay Books editions of Waugh's books, the cover and style are lovely. If you love Waugh, you'll love this book. Highly recommended.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vile Bodies as 1930s remake of Through the looking glass, April 26, 1999

By A Customer

What seems to be most missed by readers of Vile Bodies is the supposedly cold ironic author's sympathy for the Bright Young Things he's writing about. So they're empty, loveless, superficial, but they are also the animating force of the novel (1930 was a turgid time of Depression), inventive, amusing, some are even likeable. The love scene between Adam and Nina is very moving behind the brutally ironic mode of its narration - we sense two very scared naive human beings who live by appearances struggling as the reality of the situation hits them. The young people act as they do because their society has no moral centre they can cling to. Parents are mentally unstable and reckless, judges allow young girls to die stupidly in their company, prime ministers are lecherous old codgers, aristocratic grands dames are white slave traders, and religion is either a stepping stone for power (Rothschild) or a vulgarised money-grubbing circus (Miss Ape). By contrast, the Things' aimless frivolity is something of an understandable rebellion in the face of this example from their elders. So ineffectual is the Establishment that the two characters who do wish to settle down in the conservative state of marriage, however sincere or otherwise, are constantly hindered. Ironically, the form of the book is fragmentary, mirroring the society it portrays, but it is the exploits of the Things that bring it together, give it a unifying force. The book is epigraphed by two quotes from Through the looking glass: like Alice, ordered hierarchical society looks at itself, and sees a mad whirling spinning top going madly out of control. Like Thomas Pynchon's Maxwell Demon, the more energy it expends the quicker it reaches inertia. The war at the end isn't literal (we are never given any wider political dimensions). Adam is flung off the merry-go-round into a bleak, dismal hell of his own making, a life without any meaningful ties to shore up against the ruins. A very moving, terrifying, sad, comic masterpiece from the century's funniest writer.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece about the Absurdity of Man, July 11, 1997

By A Customer

In Mr. Waugh's second novel, the absurdity of humankind is explored. The reader is allowed to follow a brief period in the lives of the "Bright Young People." They are young Londoners of the early 1930's who are well educated and from good families. Through the trials of the protagonist, Adam Fenwick-Symes, the reader is able to see the silliness of human existence. The "Bright Young People" spends their days and nights avoiding all real human experiences, especially love. Mr. Waugh chronicles a time in England when the motto "eat, drink and be merry" was embraced as a spiritual philosophy. At times, passages in this book are very amusing, but it never fails to recognize how life can be wasted when people are just "vile bodies."