Vile Bodies
by Evelyn Waugh

Why oh why have I never read Waugh before? How has this happened? He was clever and funny and acerbic and fun and catty. Can you tell I enjoyed this book?

The novel follows a short time in the lives of the “bright young things”, the high, fast-paced society of 1920s London. From the first page the caustic comic tone is set. No-one escapes a vicious lashing. There are no real heroes, though a case might be made for Adam Fenwick-Symes being the centrepiece. He is certainly the butt of the longest joke: his relationship with lovely but frankly flighty Nina.

The story is really a series of parties and other social engagements. As Adam remarks at one point:

“…’Oh, Nina, what a lot of parties.‘
(Masked parties, Savage parties, Russian parties, Circus parties…parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and nightclubs, in windmills and swimming baths…all that succession and repetition of massed humanity. Those vile bodies…)”

For all the wit and the lack of getting inside anyone’s head, the characters are not entirely caricatures. There is an element of that certainly, but there are complexities too. When at one point Adam encounters a dressmaker’s dummy, the narration adds:

“…there had been one of these in Adam’s home which they used to call ‘Jemima’ – one day he stabbed ‘Jemima’ with a chisel and scattered stuffing over the nursery floor and was punished. A more enlightened age would have seen a complex in this action and worried accordingly…”

While the goings-on are quite lighthearted and romping, there is the occasional event that you feel ought to be being taken more seriously. But then when I got to the ironically titled final chapter “Happy ending”, I realised that that was the whole point. Without wishing to give anything away, Waugh neatly provides the excuse for all this living to excess, while maintaining his pessimistic tone.

The satire of society does come at a price. Emotion is limited or absent completely, despite the central love story of Adam and Nina, not to mention some other serious goings-on that might demand an emotional response. And politicians are present and roundly mocked but their politics not dealt with at all. I suppose it is quite a small book and to keep its momentum it had to have a narrow focus.

One subject that does muscle its way into the narrative is tabloid journalism, in particular the gossip columns. This was handled so amusingly that I particularly want to read Waugh’s novel Scoop soon.

First published 1930 by Chapman & Hall.