This book is part of the following of my reading list projects:

* Time 100 Best English-language Novels since 1923 [#94]
* Random House 100 Best English-language novels of the 20th Century [#34]
* 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die [#365]

When I started reading this, it seemed similar to Edith Wharton's Twilight Sleep which I had read a few weeks previously. Both paint humorous portraits of the trivial lives of the upper strata of society in the inter-war years (though Wharton deals with New York and Waugh with England). I was therefore unprepared for the direction that A Handful of Dust takes in the second half where, despite remaining comical, it takes a much darker tone and, indeed, finishing on a very black note. While Wharton confines hereself to fairly gentle satire, Waugh attacks society/civilisation (albeit in a very literate manner) with the aim of showing that, despite all its pretensions, it is based on cruelty and that barbarism is never far from the surface.

RELEASE NOTES:

At the London BC Meetup.

RELEASE NOTES:

At the London BC Meetup.

RELEASE NOTES:

At the London BC Meetup.

Picked up at London BC meet-up,