Vile Bodies (Hardcover)

The main plot concerns a group of young people from London's "bright young generation." They have monied parents and spend most of their time searching for the next party and amusing fad. The protagonist is Adam Fenwick-Symes, a poor writer who manages to live the highlife by being a hanger-on. He is in love with Nina Blount, but cannot marry her because of his economic status. The book chronicles his attempts at making enough money to marry Nina. As with other Waugh books, the characters are passive and do not really do anything, but they manage to have some terrible things happen to them!

The supporting characters are extremely funny, including the modern Agatha Runcible, the revolving line of Prime Ministers, and the various people who become the columnist Mr. Chatterbox. Of course, as with all of the Back Bay Books editions of Waugh's books, the cover and style are lovely. If you love Waugh, you'll love this book. Highly recommended.

I ended up buying two more copies from a used book store, then stealing a library copy with the help of a flathead screwdriver and some needle-nosed pliers (to pull out the magnetic theft-alert strip), when I figured teachers wouldn't confiscate a copy from the University library.

That's how desperate I was to devote every waking minute to this book until I finished it.

The reason it was hard to hide was the fact that I laughed out loud so many times while reading it. Right in the middle of the "Cell" unit in Biology class, I got to the part about the "angels," and began to giggle, and the more I tried to suppress my laughter, the more it grew out of control. My teacher asked what I found so funny about plant cells that hadn't been funny about animal cells, and then the book was gone.

You just can't go wrong with this book. The humor is very sharp, and cut neatly. There's not a single ragged edge here. Too completely mix my metaphors, there's not a cheap shot. No lame jokes. Waugh is perfect.

Of course, there is a theme underlying his humor. All the humor is directed at time-wasters, be they bureaucrats, the leisure class, or religious types who offer nothing but vague promises of "salvation" in exchange for your, "thank you," donation. He lays some of the blame for the precipitousness of these types on WWI, and England being in some way not "over it." On the other hand, this book is his attempt to pick people up and shake them and say "Get over it!" (OK, not in those exact words, but you get the idea.)

This book is not didactic, though. You are free to ignore the message, and just read the book for its humor. You won't regret it.