Review: A Handful of Dust

Title: A Handful of Dust
Author: Evelyn Waugh
First published: 1934
Publisher (this edition): Penguin Modern Classics

A Handful of Dust was recommended to me during a holiday chat about favourite books, and I've been looking forward to reading this one for a while.

Brenda is married to Tony Last, who enjoys nothing more than a weekend on his inherited countryside estate with his wife and son. After a few years of the quiet life, Brenda misses the thrills of London society, so takes up a small studio flat – along with a superficial lover of insubstantial character – and very quietly moves to the city.



A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

What follows is the tale of a bitter divorce, but it isn't written with bitterness. The lightness of touch pokes fun at a group of people who have more money and time than they know what to do with. To prevent boredom, they go to endless parties at each others houses, organise each others love lives and keep what they mistakenly think of as secrets. This is not a story about politics or war, but the changing economic situation of the 1930s looms behind them all like a shadow, and it becomes clear that there might not be room in the modern world for this lot and their ways.

On first impression, A Handful of Dust was more accessible than expected, written by a man with the ability to see the humour in uncomfortable and tragic places. There are also some beautiful phrases here, and one of my favourites is: "...llamas packed with works of intricate craftsmanship...". Without giving away too much, parts of this book will satisfy your inner Amazonian explorer. A nice surprise, given that the majority of the story is set in a gothic mansion.

I mentioned this in a to-read list a few weeks ago, but a distant relative of mine was Evelyn Waugh's housekeeper when he was a boy, which added a layer of fun detective work to the story for me. John Last, son of the divorcing couple, has a nanny, and I love the thought that this sincere character could be based on a voice that trickled down the generations to my own ears. Perhaps a tenuous link, but I'm going to stick with it, as they don't come along often!

A Handful of Dust was an entertaining read with an undercurrent of injustice that touched all of the main characters. I don't envy them, despite their spacious houses and bustling social lives. Add this to your list of must-read classics.

Review: Love in a Cold Climate (TV)

Name: Love in a Cold Climate

Starring: Rosamund Pike, Elisabeth Dermot Walsh, Megan Dodds, Javier Alcina

Length: 2 hours 30 mins, over two episodes

Year: 2002

I’ve cheated! Love in a Cold Climate is still on my to-read list, but it is also on Netflix. After a busy weekend earlier this month, I conked out on the sofa, tuned into this mini-series and made a Christmas pom-pom.

The BBC adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate

Three upper-class girls in the 1930s are looking for love, and maybe even marriage. After a fairly dowdy coming-out ball, things start to get interesting for them. Our narrator, Fanny (Rosamund Pike), is constantly being compared to her mother, the infamous ‘Bolter’, a woman of – shall we say – a loose moral persuasion, according to the rigid standards of the time. I read about a real-life Bolter a few years ago in a book by Francis Osborne, and Idina Sackville was apparently the inspiration for Fanny's mother.

Polly, Fanny’s beautiful friend, has to endure ball after ball while her snobbish mother, Lady Montdore, waxes lyrical over her daughter’s apparent ambivalence to romance. It is Polly who questions, on returning from Imperial India, how love will differ in a cold climate. The secrets of her heart are revealed when she marries her uncle, her mother’s lover, the promiscuous ‘Boy’, scandalising society and officially cutting ties with the outraged Lady Montdore.

Fanny’s cousin, Linda (Elizabeth Dermot Walsh), defies her father by marrying a German man, and in doing so appears to fall on her feet, having both of the boxes ‘marriage’ and ‘love’ ticked. That is, until it goes pear-shaped when Linda’s head and heart are turned by a communist speaker in Hyde Park. Her story was my favourite, as her pursuit of true love takes her around the world and back again, ending in England during the Blitz.

This TV adaptation combines both Love in a Cold Climate and Pursuit of Love, so I’m not one hundred percent sure where one story began and the other ended. All the more reason to read the books! The show was pacy and depicted the girls' spirit as they navigated life, love and society in the changing world between the wars. The characters around them were eccentric and not always that likeable, which made Fanny, Polly and Linda all the more endearing.

One for a rainy Sunday afternoon!