Vile bodies that intrigue...
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When I read Brideshead Revisted I had begun to wonder why Evelyn Waugh was so highly regarded. Vile Bodies answered the question perfectly. His creation of characters is beautiful and effortless and he handles humour and pathos with great skill. The narrative style is simple, and varied, keeping the reader interested throughout. What I found most compelling about the book was how Waugh excellently balanced the frivolous and vacuous lives of the Bright Young Things with the serious issues of their lifestyle and the world which they lived in. I enjoyed the novel from beginning to end, grew to love the characters whilst despairing of their shallow partying lifestyles, seeing what was ahead of them and pitying them.
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"Faster, faster!"
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(4.5 stars) Focused on the "bright, young things" whose frantic pursuits of pleasure led to constant and ever more frivolous parties in the years leading up to World War II, Vile Bodies offers a satiric look at every aspect of upper class British society. From the hilarious opening chapter, in which an assortment of British travelers is crossing the Channel from France during especially rough weather, through innumerable parties, dances, weekend visits to country houses, automobile races, airplane trips, a movie set, and ultimately, "the biggest battlefield in the history of the world," Waugh skewers his characters and their values (or lack of values) and, in the process casts a jaundiced eye on society as a whole.
Adam Fenwick-Symes, an author living on the largesse of his friends, has been courting wealthy Nina Blount, and their blasé, back-and-forth relationship serves as the loose framework for the novel, which is more a collage of pitch-perfect scenes than it is an organized story. Mrs. Melrose Ape, an evangelist "who had no beard to speak of"; Walter Outrage, "last week's Prime Minister"; Lady Throbbing and her sister Mrs. Blackwater, whose portrait set a record for rock-bottom prices at Christie's; Miles Malpractice, Lady Circumference, and a host of other absurd characters populate the novel and keep the novel moving smartly, though not in a straight narrative line. Gradually, as war draws closer and the characters remain resolutely oblivious, the humor darkens, and when war is finally declared, the shock is all the greater because the Prime Minister himself seems not to have known about it.
Waugh's wit, seen in his sparkling and sometimes mordant dialogue, his inclusion of wicked gossip columns penned by Mr. Chatterbox, his imitations of high flown jargon, and his observations about "progress," as illustrated by the motorcar and airplane, keeps the reader constantly amused. At the same time, Waugh's preference for the traditional and the civilized over the new and the vulgar is obvious. When the final chapter, the ironically titled "Happy Ending," is reached, the scene takes place on a battlefield in France, where several familiar characters resolve some of the unfinished business of Waugh's satire and re-emphasize the ludicrous behavior of so many of Waugh's people.
Though the characters are superficial and their behavior even more so, as one would expect in a satire, Waugh manages to keep the reader's interest high through his keen observations of society in the years just prior to the war, and his rapid changes of focus and scene. The fact that the book was published in 1930, ten years before World War II actually took place, attests to Waugh's perceptive analysis of where the country was indeed headed. Mary Whipple
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brilliant
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what a fantastic book. It is a rarety when i find a book that i don't want to end because it's so good. This is one of them. A lovely gem which has started me on the path of more Waugh books. A great insight into the 1920's which is my favourite era.
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Vile People?
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This novel is set between the wars when the age of the Toff was coming to an end. Evelyn Waugh wrote about the IT generation of his age, which he was a member of with dazzling acerbity. This is a virtuosic masterpiece written by our greatest satirist on a subject that he knew only too well. The 'Bright Young Things' as they were populary known as, or vile bodies as Waugh calls them were the type of people who when older would populate government and senior positions of power. It is ultimatley for the reader to make up his mind about the characters, but there is a bit of us that wishes we could get away with some of their shenanigans. This is without doubt a highly funny and very satisfying read, that you will want to come back to again and again.
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How terribly sick-making, dahling!
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The best part of this book is the end. Read the last four pages and you get a real sense of (high) society breaking down as war breaks out. The rest of the book is not so much badly written as badly dated; satire does not date well, look at old copies of Punch magazine or the works of PG Wodehouse and it is obvious that they should have been pulped once 1950 was over. "Vile Bodies" is a particularly irritating example of the genre: ridiculously over the top character names, bon mots aplenty (mostly pretty poor puns) and any sembelence of a plot lost in a haze of SATIRE. Imagine listening to Noel Coward records for four hours straight and you have an idea of what reading this boook feels like.
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