Another book read: a Waugh

I think I'm on a roll now! I finished yet another book. My ostentatious ‘to read’ pile in the living room is getting smaller. After the non-fiction of the previous book, I decided to go fiction again. And a friend had lent me a book by Evelyn Waugh when she heard I had never read anything by him. She offered me ‘Vile Bodies’. The cover suggests it is the British answer to the Great Gatsby. 

As soon as I started reading I disagreed. The author starts introducing a lot of characters to you, and the majority has completely ludicrous names. Mrs Ape? Mr Outrage? Lady Metroland? That sounds a bit facetious to me. I also didn't think he was making them anything other than superficial sketches.

I did see the Great Gatsby connection, of course; the characters in this book are continuously skint, but in a way, always rich. They have the connections. They can just borrow some money from a gullible rich friend. They rarely seem to need to work, they seem permanently drunk, and food is something other people cook for you. It is very upper class.

Something that is quite different between the two books, other than the jokey tone, is that in the Great Gatsby, of course, the main story is driven by an obsessive infatuation. Nobody is obsessively infatuated in Vile Bodies. The protagonist has a love interest, but he is decidedly half-hearted about it. And so is she. The sparks entirely refrain from coming off the page.

The whole book is some privileged young people being feckless and drunk, all the way until on page 265 of 271, the First World War breaks out. And then the final pages are dedicated to the protagonist, who is in the middle of the war zone. It is quite a contrast. It does lend a bit of gravity to the whole book. But, of course, even in the devastated wasteland of trench warfare the implausible encounters continue.

I don't think I have a big urge to read more of his work. But now at least I have read one, and I know what it's like! And it read rather fast. The next one will be non-fiction again!