Review: A Handful of Dust

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When faced with the ultimate meaninglessness of life, human foibles all add up to despair, death, or a happy combination of the two! - or so Evelyn Waugh would have you believe. I didn't know anything about the author or his reputation before picking it up, but from the first few chapters I imagined it going in a P.G. Wodehouse direction: each chapter had another miscommunication, and the Gordian knot of social faux pas was grower larger and larger. I couldn't wait for Jeeves to come along with his nail scissors, snip a single thread, and everything would shake out for the better in the end. How innocent I was.
I now understand that Waugh is just the opposite of Wodehouse. There is no reconciliation, laughter, or even understanding; instead there is alienation, misery, and abandonment by an unforgiving universe. Every character is chasing their own personal gain, only to find that happiness and fulfillment is a bitter illusion. And it's no morality play, because the only character fool enough to actually care about other people is punished most of all.
Waugh's nihilism makes this reader despair. Life is short - why read Waugh?

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