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Vile Bodies

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 4,564 ratings · 308 reviews

From the cover:
"Here again, as in Decline and Fall, we are in the fashionable Mayfair of the twenties, when the Bright Young Things execised their inventive minds (and Vile Bodies) in every kind or capricious escapade. The plot is an adroit jigsaw of amusing situations; the characters a vivid assortment of those who inhabit the socia domain that lies between Park Land and...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published 1955 by Penguin (first published 1930)

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Jul 26, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who needs a posh antidote to The Only Way is Essex

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list and the belief that Stephen Fry is a minor deity

Shelves: 1001-books, bookcrossing-books, read-in-2010, so-right-but-so-wrong

"Ooooh what's that shiny thing, it's hurting my eyes."

"Sorry, that'd be me, I'm a bright young thing. Avert your eyes lest they be burned from their sockets."

"Wow, so what is a bright young thing then? Forgive my ignorance but I'm just not that cultured."

"Don't worry, its an easy premise to grasp - here, let me explain... we bright young things are an erudite group of social laaah-de-dahs who favour a bohemian life style. We like the finer things in life and indulge our love of drinking, dancing...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Lesley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Updated thoughts can be found here - http://youtu.be/msKfCg6fUzo

I just finished reading the gorgeous 1930 novel, Vile Bodies by the old genius of a boy, Evelyn Waugh.

I feel it's not too soon to admit to this already being one of my favorite books of all time. Just lovely in every way.

I'd already seen the hilarious 2003 film adaptation by my hero, Stephen Fry but I actually think I like the book even more.

So rich with wit and humor. so full of characters that one would love to share a bottle (or...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reading-through-history, 2012

"Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the saviour...Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."
Philipians 3:17-21

This book snuck up on me. It's really fun and quick to read - satirical and absurdist - and suddenly toward the end I started to think that maybe it's not a little but quite a bit deeper than it looks. I'm going to have to put some thoug...more

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Mar 16, 2009 Evan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-reads, __in-my-collection, humor, bohemian-rhapsodies

Up til now I was 0-2 with Waugh, which might elicit a "Waugh is me," which, alas, it just did...

"The Loved One," his famous satire of the death business in the USA mildly amused me in high school. I found it at least more interesting than "Scoop," a look at the news biz that I barely remember anything about at all other than the lingering memory of being bitterly disappointed by it.

"Vile Bodies" is often said to be his masterpiece, and so I just waded into the first 50 pages and find them mildly...more Up til now I was 0-2 with Waugh, which might elicit a "Waugh is me," which, alas, it just did...

"The Loved One," his famous satire of the death business in the USA mildly amused me in high school. I found it at least more interesting than "Scoop," a look at the news biz that I barely remember anything about at all other than the lingering memory of being bitterly disappointed by it.

"Vile Bodies" is often said to be his masterpiece, and so I just waded into the first 50 pages and find them mildly amusing as it follows the adventures of several sets of Brits (we're asked to consider quite a large cast of characters right off the bat), particularly one young stifled author, Adam, betrothed to a woman who hardly seems interested. In some ways she seems to embody the dispassionate tone of the book so far. The style of the book is supposed to be more complex than usual for Waugh. I find it equal parts infuriating and engaging enough as a peek into social mores of a time and a people. But, at this rate, I'm afraid I may be looking at 0-3. We'll see.

OK, so on page 125 now and well more than halfway in and have to say this odd book has kind of crept up on me. The phony society columns Adam is writing, to the chagrin of the gullible in-crowd makes for funny situations. The reappearance and deft disappearance of the man with Adam's 1,000-pound horserace betting money is a nice circle-back.
I found myself infuriated for most of the way to some degree by this book --- it's written in almost a machine-gun like way, snatches of dialogue and incident move it along rather than typical explanatory narrative segues. It gets more compulsively readable as it goes along. I can see this being a possible re-read to catch subtleties missed on the first go.

Page 185. Have just gotten through the motorcar race segment and have to say this book has ingratiated and wormed its way into my affections. This, after initial struggle with it --- I fought it and thought it frivolous and even pointless at first, and had trouble with the style --- it now reads like a breeze and I'm finding myself laughing out loud. Should finish this up promptly...

OK, finished. So the pampered Euro elites partying to their doom sort of thing... All right then. This was uneven but rewarding. No doubt my favorite Waugh so far. So maybe in reality I'm now 2-1 with Waugh, because I did sort of enjoy "The Loved One" enough to give it three stars. (less)

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Mar 22, 2011 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-book-challenge

I often wonder about book blurbs, because really how many times can you describe a book with the words funny and hilarious and have the book actually be funny and hilarious. My edition of this book has a blurb by the New York Time's that says "It may shock you, but it will make you laugh". Well New York Times, let's see the tally shall we: times I was shocked by this book = zero; times I laughed = maybe two and a half, but it wasn't a hearty laugh, it was more of a sarcastic "Ha!" Now, a better...more

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Mar 30, 2008 Kristopher Jansma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookblog

Vile Bodies is no Brideshead Revisited, but then, if you read my (much) earlier post on Brideshead, you'll know that even Brideshead itself didn't quite live up to it's own first 100 pages for me. What I'd really like to do is just read the beginnings of Evelyn Waugh novels from now on. From the first pages of Vile Bodies I was filled with the delicious anticipation of forthcoming satirical wit, but just as I experienced with Brideshead, Handful of Ashes, and even Decline and Fall, the rest of t...more Vile Bodies is no Brideshead Revisited, but then, if you read my (much) earlier post on Brideshead, you'll know that even Brideshead itself didn't quite live up to it's own first 100 pages for me. What I'd really like to do is just read the beginnings of Evelyn Waugh novels from now on. From the first pages of Vile Bodies I was filled with the delicious anticipation of forthcoming satirical wit, but just as I experienced with Brideshead, Handful of Ashes, and even Decline and Fall, the rest of the book left me still wanting. Vile Bodies opens grandly on a ship in a storm, and bounces around from character to character - Father Rothschild, bearing someone else's suitcase containing a false beard; Evangelical Mrs. Ape and her seven children (named Charity, Fortitude, Prudence, Divine Discontent... etc.) who sing hymns and wear wings; Prime Minister Outrage (only in office a week) and on and on... all of whom seem bursting with potential for scandalous, lovely satirical hijinks... and yet... while they reappear throughout the book in various little episodes, never feel skeweringly sharp or nearly as clever as they were going to be in my imagination, back on page 5.

The vignette that is clearly central and by far the most entertaining, was that of Adam, a young writer who has just finished his first novel, for which he's been paid a hefty advance. Upon getting off the boat, Adam encounters a customs officer who confiscates most of his books and then burns his manuscript, due to its supposed indecency. Adam meets with his publisher and concludes that he'll have to write a novel every month for a year to meet his newfound debt, and that he won't be able to marry the lovely Nina Blount as planned. Throughout the rest of the book, Adam resurfaces on and off, always suddenly falling into some small fortune, telling Nina the wedding is back on, and then losing everything and cancelling the wedding again. The best of these episodes surrounds Adam's breif stint as a gossip writer named Mr. Chatterbox, and he writes a weekly "Page 6"-ish column about the "bright young things" of society and all their crazy night lives. He soon gets bored and just begins inventing important people, or hyping restaurants and clubs that are not nice at all and thus tricking everyone else into flocking there. He is promptly fired, of course, but not because his bosses care that he's making things up (they seem to expect this) but because he wrote that someone was wearing a bottle-green bowler hat and no one could conceive of such nonsense. So he's fired and the wedding is off... at least until the next escapade.

While predictable, this manages to be very funny for the most part and keeps the novel humming along. Adam encounters many of the odd characters from the introduction as he goes along, but they never seem very important, or interesting, and are gone before long.

In a move reminiscent of Brideshead, the novel concludes with a surprise flash-forward to Adam in the midst of "the biggest battlefield in the history of the world" wherein he reads a letter from Nina, now happily married to someone else and very much still flighty and out-of-touch. Now in a warzone, the silliness of all the preceding chapters is thrown into sharp contrast and here, but really only here, the irony is deliciously sharp. However, it didn't quite feel like the payoff I wanted from the previous 300 pages. I did appreciate one thing, though - the book came out in 1930 and in the forward, Waugh writes that the book is set in "the near future, when existing social tendencies have become more marked" - all of which makes this final chapter, in the "biggest battlefield in the history of the world" eerily pre-escient.(less)

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Jan 21, 2010 Elliott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Instead of writing an original review of "Vile Bodies," I'm honoring the time-tested, market-approved hip-hop methodology of sampling by cribbing choice bits from someone else's review (thank you Evan Gilling for being articulate where I was not) and reproducing them here in a whimsically context-free yet strangely coherent way. If recent musical trends are any indication, this should be fun and profitable.

"I find it equal parts infuriating and engaging..." "...after initial struggle with it..."...more

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Jan 11, 2008 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I finally get to post something.

Took a long time to get through this book, and I'm still not entirely sure why. Part of it, I believe, is me, not Mr. Waugh. A good book really is the right match between the author's words and the reader's willingness to succumb to it, and I haven't been lately.

But the end of this lighthearted farce came with a little more of a bittersweet ending than I expected. It takes a look at a decadent class of people as they flitter through situation after situation. It's...more

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May 03, 2011 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: satire, funny, clever

First impression? Hilarious. Total spot-on satire of 1930s, pseudo/wannabe posh society in Britain - and I can say that with such confidence because I was there and all. Well, no, not quite, not by about 53 years and an ocean, but I do live in New York, where desperate social climbers - the "see and be seen-ers" - and tacky people with a bit of money proliferate against my wishes.

The difference is that somewhere along the road, we stopped satirizing these people and took to glorifying them inst...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1930s, humor

"Who's that awful looking woman?"
"She's no one. Mrs. Panrast she's called now."
"She seems to know you."
"Yes. I've known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she's my mother."
"My dear, how too shaming."

If you've got a taste for Ronald Firbank's prose and you enjoy seeing Thomas Hardy getting skewered, I think you'll gleefully sink your teeth into Waugh's Vile Bodies (1930). The book's a nice slab of satire that hasn't lost its humor, though now its bite may resemble more a vicious gumming than a...more "Who's that awful looking woman?"
"She's no one. Mrs. Panrast she's called now."
"She seems to know you."
"Yes. I've known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she's my mother."
"My dear, how too shaming."

If you've got a taste for Ronald Firbank's prose and you enjoy seeing Thomas Hardy getting skewered, I think you'll gleefully sink your teeth into Waugh's Vile Bodies (1930). The book's a nice slab of satire that hasn't lost its humor, though now its bite may resemble more a vicious gumming than a threatening snap and snarl. At its heart there's only a whiff of a plot: Adam and Nina may want to get married to one another, though neither has the money to pull it off. Adam's fortunes rise and fall through a madcap series of comic episodes that read best as a miscellany of Dickensian character sketches drawn from London's high society during the waning years of 1920s. You'll meet the American evangelist, Mrs. Ape and her choir of trampish "angels"; the absentminded and well lubricated Edwardian hostess, Lottie Crump; the scatterbrained but ever so sly Col. Blount; and a host of Bright Young Things partying around the clock, led by one of Waugh's most precious creations, the dithering, drunken, dissipated Agatha Runcible.

Vile Bodies is the British version of Hemingway's lost generation eulogy, but told, thankfully, with wit and flawless timing. You won't burst out laughing too often, but it's hard to read many pages without snickering or smirking with that luscious feeling of self-righteous condescension that really good satire gives you. My only grievance is that the book carries on far too long. Keeping a dark joke going for over 300 pages calls for a little more skill than Waugh had at this point in his long career. I enjoyed the first hundred pages, got a little weary with the middle, but found the last hundred the best of all since by then I'd met all the characters and the plot had at last begun to boil.

If you ever think of reading Waugh's best known book Brideshead Revisted, you may want to set the table for it first by reading some of his satires. Their vast casts, wispy plots, and period jokes will take a little patience, but in the end you may better enjoy Waugh's style and essentially moral outlook by first playing with him while he's young and nipping. I think you'll find that the flash and fizz of these early books will deepen the nostalgia, poignancy, and somber tones that color his later work.(less)

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May 09, 2010 ElSeven rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really wish I could rate by half stars too. This is really a Three-and-a-half star book.

I enjoyed this. It was fairly typical of pre-war Waugh. It's light, breezy, wonderfully written, and takes itself about as seriously as its characters take themselves. What it felt like, really, was a Wodehouse novel with a mean streak.

Much of Waugh's social critique could be leveled at today's society as well. His characters seemed, for all their dated speech and clothing, to be people that I knew. Shiftl...more

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Dec 03, 2009 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

‘All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.’

Adam Fenwick-Symes is an unheroic hero. Adam’s engagement to Nina Blount is called off when the manuscript of his book is burned by a customs official. Adam’s livelihood depends on this manuscript and the customs official’s ‘livelihood depends on stopping works like this coming into the country.’ Alas, poor Adam. On the periphery of the Bright Young Things, in that hectic period between World Wars...more

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Jul 16, 2009 Trena rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Trena by: Book Club

I don't know that this "classic" has stood the test of time so well as true classics. I am sure it was hysterically funny at the time it was written, but it got only a single snicker from me (though several inward smiles). When I compare to much older books that are still hilarious (Henry Fielding comes to mind), it falls a bit flat.

But it is still a solid three star read. The Absurdism is absurd, the adventures madcap, the names clever, and the love story thread quite amusing. It's a fairly qui...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Ali rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Vile Bodies was Evelyn Waugh’s second novel, first published in 1930 it is dedicated to Bryan and Diana Guinness –the sister and brother-in-law of Nancy Mitford, Diana of course later becoming the infamous Diana Moseley.
"Ooooh what's that shiny thing, it's hurting my eyes."

"Sorry, that'd be me, I'm a bright young thing. Avert your eyes lest they be burned from their sockets."

"Wow, so what is a bright young thing then? Forgive my ignorance but I'm just not that cultured."
Vile Bodies is a wonderf...more Vile Bodies was Evelyn Waugh’s second novel, first published in 1930 it is dedicated to Bryan and Diana Guinness –the sister and brother-in-law of Nancy Mitford, Diana of course later becoming the infamous Diana Moseley.
"Ooooh what's that shiny thing, it's hurting my eyes."

"Sorry, that'd be me, I'm a bright young thing. Avert your eyes lest they be burned from their sockets."

"Wow, so what is a bright young thing then? Forgive my ignorance but I'm just not that cultured."
Vile Bodies is a wonderfully biting satire of London society in the years following World War I. At the centre of the story is Adam Fenwick Symes and Nina Blount who would quite like to be married to one another but neither of whom have the funds to carry it out. Nina’s father Colonel Blount is a shambling sly old duffer, marvellously vague and often confused – he is just one of number of comic creations in this novel. Adam and Nina are part of a set of Bright Young People, led by the hilariously dotty Agatha Runcible- when a seriously hung-over Agatha discovers she is breakfasting in Hawaiian costume at number 10 Downing Street – I nearly snorted all over the bus I was travelling on. The lives of these Bright Young People as they have been named -are a continuing round of parties and gossip, their antics frequently shocking traditional society through the colourful accounts that appear in the newspapers. We are introduced to a host of highly amusing characters, including gossip Columnist Lord Simon Balcairn, who early on in the novel decides to stick his head in a gas oven, American evangelist Mrs Ape, and her troupe of angels, a drunken Major who may or may not owe Adam thirty five thousand pounds, and a young man named Ginger. The way these characters speak to one another is sublimely hilarious, their antics and adventures reminiscent slightly of P G Wodehouse – but with added spite.
"Who's that awful looking woman?"
"She's no one. Mrs. Panrast she's called now."
"She seems to know you."
"Yes. I've known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she's my mother."
"My dear, how too shaming."
As the novel progresses, Adam’s fortunes fluctuate continually, and his relationship with Nina waxes and wanes as Adam chases after money – and has a couple of hilarious interviews with Nina’s wily old father.
On the surface perhaps, Vile Bodies seems much lighter in tone than Brideshead Revisited and other later works. However there is an unmistakable sharpness in it too, there is a dark bitterness at the heart of all the froth and frivolity which is fascinating. Waugh was obviously a consummate imitator and satirist of the society in which he must himself had begun to move.
(less)

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Jan 02, 2008 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What is this book even about? It seemed like a best-of British one-liners from the interwar era. After putting down the book in a kind of daze, we happened to pick up Bright Young Things on TiVO. I wondered what they could possibly put in a film. But it was line-by-line accurate, and to my surprise, beautiful, evocative, and sort of touching. Not only was it better as a film, but my post-partum brain actually needed the film to show me what was in the book. "How shaming."

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Jan 04, 2012 Melanie Hierholzer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I recommended this book to two friends to read for discussion during a girls' weekend. When I started it, I thought, Uh oh! What have I gotten us into? But I kept reading and was glad I did.

This book is an incredibly evocative look at the upper classes in England during the time just before the Second World War. The ennui and dissolution of an entire generation of a certain class is dissected and satirized. Waugh injects some bizarre elements, but no more so than can be found in media reporting...more

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Jul 21, 2011 David Manns rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, literary-fiction

Having read, and loved, Brideshead Revisited, I decided to read one of Waugh's earlier novels, namely Vile Bodies. Set in the 1920's amongst the so-called 'Bright Young Things' the book follows various characters as they flit about London society with seemingly not a care in the world for anyone but themselves. The opening of the book can seem quite off putting with it's short staccato paragraphs and odd collection of names as they travel back to England from the continent aboard a boat caught i...more

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Jun 04, 2010 Dana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

A friend of mine read this and told me that it was very funny - so I came to it with some hefty expectations. It wasn't laugh out loud funny for me (which was a little disappointing) but definitely had me smirking on the inside at various points.

Like a few others here - I found that the book snuck up on me and although feeling a little lost with all the characters at first I was strangely hooked by about page 100.

I think this is a book I will appreciate much more on a second reading and also wi...more A friend of mine read this and told me that it was very funny - so I came to it with some hefty expectations. It wasn't laugh out loud funny for me (which was a little disappointing) but definitely had me smirking on the inside at various points.

Like a few others here - I found that the book snuck up on me and although feeling a little lost with all the characters at first I was strangely hooked by about page 100.

I think this is a book I will appreciate much more on a second reading and also with more background information on the characters in Evelyn's society at that time.

The book has some wonderful moments in it - things like simon balcairn's last newspaper entry (although not necessarily the following event), the corruption/arbitrary nature of the customs officials, the narrator's remarks on the characters, adam's newspaper entries, the singers. I liked Waugh's use of names. Much like someone else on here has said - they really got me excited about what Waugh would do with them - and I guess I was expecting a little more.

It's a book that still remains relevant today - with society's obsession with celebrity and the need to consume more and more - forever feeling we never have enough money. Reminds me of the scene where Nina and Adam are sitting in a nice cafe eating oysters and discussing how 'terribly poor' they will be and Nina comments on where they will be able to get cheap oysters. So lost and absorbed in their own world. so unaware of real poverty. This is great social commentary and satire by Waugh.

I love the shift of scene at the end. I think it really brought home the superficiality of their high society existence.

I'm looking forward to watching Stephen Fry's adaptation of the book to film. It's a book that seems begging to be played out on a stage or in a film - with so many characters and so much dialogue.

The feel of the book reminded me a bit of the witty banter in Michael Wilding's 'Academia Nuts'. A book that is incredibly funny and is a wonderful satire of the university system - set in an English Department. I must say I prefer the Wilding - but perhaps that is simply a reflection of its relevance to the current time.

(less)

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Jan 02, 2010 Paula rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: between-the-wars, 1001, read_in_2010

I seem to have a habit of reading books that I don't much enjoy on January 1. Last year it was Lord of the Flies which left such a bad taste in my mouth I still remember the depth of my dislike.

At least Vile Bodies wasn't too terribly bad, for my taste, it was more that it was a style of writing to which I am not much accustomed. Waugh seemed to jump right into a scene in life with a mash of characters, and never stepped back to set the stage in a way that I normally like. It was non-stop go-go...more

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Nov 09, 2010 Claire rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The dialog is probably the best thing about the book, it sparkles and makes you laugh out loud, as do the names of the characters which paint wonderfully visual pictures ... Lady Circumference, Miss Runcible, and Mr Throbbing for example. If you fancy a quick read that immerses you in the tumultuous world of fading aristocracy, bright social lights, louche moral characters and all in a terribly, terribly English accent, you will enjoy this book.

Here's an extract that sums up the appeal of this...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Tfitoby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: funny, lit

I very much enjoyed this classic from Waugh. I've only been waiting over a year to read it after letting someone borrow it (and they didn't even read it!) and promptly devoured it upon it's return.

Of course I very much enjoyed Stephen Fry's movie version and Scoop gave a hint of the playful nature of Waugh's writing style but there's really no comparison when it comes to reading about Adam and Nina and Agatha and Miles and Lottie and The Major and Colonel Blount and all these fun little backgrou...more

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Sep 14, 2007 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As my Waugh-coach John observed, this book speaks truths as apropos now as they were between the two World Wars. I think that high-waisted jeans may be the "black suede shoes" of today. As for "green bowler hats", may I suggest, well, green bowler hats? Kate Moss is a fan, I hear. Waugh is such fun because his snark is surreal, not ironic, though I didn't really get the Ms. Melrose Ape storyline.

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Feb 22, 2012 Hip E. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This passage had the lyricism and insight of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writing about airplanes, or Melville about fishing, or Proust about shrubbery:

The truth is that motor-cars offer a very happy illustration of the metaphysical distinction between "being" and "becoming." Some cars, mere vehicles with no purpose above bare locomotion, mechanical drudges such as Lady Metroland's Hispano-Suiza, or Mrs. Mouse's Rolls Royce, or Lady Circumference's 1912 Daimler, or the "general reader's" Austin Seve...more

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Sep 09, 2008 Michel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit, hist-fic

Waugh is as cruel and observant as Agatha Christie, but his characters are hollow: they are what they do.
Quite probably an accurate portrait of high society in the twenties, amoralized by the great war, gutted of compassion and weary of human interaction.
I enjoyed the book and had a few laughs, but the dispassionate humor leaves an ashy, cynical aftertaste.

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Mar 25, 2013 Fernanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Como un gran documental dramatizado. Es bastante entretenido, lleno de ironía y situaciones ridículas. Es la vida maravillosa de la brillante juventud yendo mal.

Este libro es una entrelazada historia de diversos personajes cuyos principales exponentes son Adam y Nina, un joven escritor con mala suerte y una joven de la aristocracia algo estoica, sin un ápice de interés por la vida, continuamente aburrida y deseosa de que su joven prometido la entretenga. Por azares del destino el compromiso de N...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Emily by: mum

At points I found this book difficult to read, there seemed to be hundreds of names and characters which made it difficult to follow. Because of this very reason I decided to read the book as quickly as possible, I didn't put it down for two days due to the fact the moment I would try to rejoin the story I would realise I had forgotten who was who, and I hate back tracking and re-reading, if only Evelyn Waugh could've made things a little easier by the characters being referred to in less names,...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Justin Evans rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Probably my second favorite Waugh; it's darker than the others, cleverer, almost as funny, and, I think, better written than most of his early work. The downside is that you really need to concentrate, so this is less light-entertainment and more high-literature. Of course, that's a backhanded downside. Oh no. This review just became incomprehensible. I think I need some champagne, darling.

But before I do, I have to protest against the ugly and poorly edited American edition. In the UK or Austr...more

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Jul 13, 2008 Zepp rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Edgeless sandy satire- laughing fires punctuate an otherwise unfancied landscape.
But it does include my new favorite expression, which is Ginger up! and I don't know what it means but it works in just about any mood room smile situation.

Only three stars because this is the same guy who wrote Brideshead...

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Sep 11, 2007 Eleni rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of those books that I didn't really enjoy at the time that I was reading it, but have since appropriated just about every possible pull-quote from my now dog-eared and underlined-to-death copy. Waugh delivers fantastic dialogue that remains with you long after your initial read.

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Jan 10, 2013 Andrew Woods rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ever since reading Brideshead Revisited for A-level, I've been in love with the fiction of Evelyn Waugh. His satire was as sharp and as English as Excalibur.
- Vile Bodies is a hangover from the hedonistic summer of 1929, a novel where Waugh shares his darkly comic, and sober reflections on the parties of London's aristocratic elite, the Bright Young Things.
- The novel is a delight; brutally witty and keenly observed, no one avoided becoming one of Waugh's targets. However, the book isn't pure...more

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About Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was al...more Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.”

In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an apprentice cabinet maker and journalist he wrote and had published his first novel, “Decline and Fall” in 1928.

In 1928 he was married for the first time to Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.

During the thirties Waugh produced one gem after another. From this decade come: “Vile Bodies” (1930), “Black Mischief” (1932), the incomparable “A Handful of Dust” (1934) and “Scoop” (1938). After the Second World War he published what is for many his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited,” in which his Catholicism took center stage. “The Loved One” a scathing satire of the American death industry followed in 1947. After publishing his “Sword of Honor Trilogy” about his experiences in World War II (“Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955), “Unconditional Surrender" (1961) his career was seen to be on the wane. In fact, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1963) - his last published novel - received little critical or commercial attention.

Evelyn Waugh, considered by many to be the greatest satirical novelist of his day, passed away on 10 April 1966 at the age of 62.

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Quotes from Vile Bodies

“After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.” — 355 people liked it

“There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.” — 33 people liked it

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