A Handful of Dust

By Evelyn Waugh, 214 pages (1934).

This story first appeared as a serial in the United States with an alternate final chapter that I found much more satisfying.  I am very glad it was contained in my Everyman's Library edition not because I dislike unhappy endings but because I like stories that get you something.  The real ending carries on the same tenor the book had for its first five chapters while the alternate one gives the reader a little twist.

I struggled throughout what sort of meaning to take away.  For much of the book I thought that the protagonist's son represented the decline of the English aristocracy--and I suppose he still could--with his insistence on using low expressions and taking pleasure in other's misfortunes.  I suppose every character could be attributed with the latter defecit.

I then thought it was a satire--well I know it is on some level--only.

What depressed me most was that the good characters intentionally moved away from one-another while the bad together.  There's nothing wrong with that unless you romanticize the bad, which Waugh did.  He did not, however, demonize the good.  This Waugh is not a warm, well-intentioned book.

Other than that, I'm confounded why it is 34th when Brideshead Revisited, which is much more enjoyable and complex, is 80?  Oh well.

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