Untitled

Outside, the city was lurching into stunned awareness.  The clockwork began to turn, motors gasped like asthmatics, and smoke dribbled into the sky.  People appeared on the streets as though propelled from cuckoo clocks, only to be packed into subway cars like cans on a conveyor belt.  Through this turmoil trotted Danny, as unconcerned as a hound free of its leash.  He moved along board fences plastered with posters and curses, and came to a rail line which he followed over a canal of oily water by means of a blackened steel bridge.  This brought him to a section of the city composed of puffing factories and battered warehouses, and then to a suburb of row after row of grimy houses.   All day he walked, until at length the skyline rose behind him and the impatient grunting of autos diminished.

A Handful of Dust

A sardonic and amusing tale about shallow people with exquisite manners. They are, of course, British, members of the upper crust sandwiched between two world wars.

The names of the characters make them sound as though they've wandered in from the board game Clue, signalling the author's comic intent: Lady Cockpurse, Mrs. Beaver, Major Rattery, Colonel Inch, Reggie St. Cloud, Miss Tendril, Dr. Messinger.

It's all very light and frothy until an unexpected death occurs. The novel further darkens with an abrupt relocation to South America and an ending that is far from settling. At this point one recalls that the title is taken from The Wasteland.

Evelyn Waugh

While I was vaguely familiar with Waugh's work, I was surprised at how extensive it is: 16 novels, several volumes of short stores, plus more than a dozen works of non-fiction, including biographies, travel books, and an autobiography.

Among his more well-known novels are Scoop, Vile Bodies, Decline and Fall, The Loved One, and Brideshead Revisited.