Book Review: Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

“Everyone seems to have been talking about the younger generation tonight. The most boring subject I know.” “Well, after all, what does all this stand for if there’s going to be no-one to carry it on?” “All what?” Mr. Outrage looked around the supper-room, deserted except for two footmen who lent against the walls looking as waxen as the clump of flowers sent up that morning from hot-houses in the country. “What does all what stand for?” “All this business of government.” “As far as I’m concerned it stands for a damned lot of hard work and precious little in return. If those young people can find a way to get on without it, good luck to them.” - Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies is a novella that details the life of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s and 30s- young, without responsibilities, unmarried and for the most part moneyed, the BYT's partied their way through the post-WWI years, drawing criticism and scandal with them wherever they went. Where Fitzgerald chronicled the American lifestyle in The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and the Damned, Waugh shows us life in England, complete with Parliament, Lords, and scandals around the Prime Minister and his daughters. Waugh's novel loosely follows a small group of Bright Young People and details the various difficulties they get themselves into, mostly through their own negligence. The characters are childish, irresponsible, and very much an example of Fitzgerald's "careless people" (The Great Gastby, pg. 166). They act without thinking about the consequences of their own actions and what the future may hold. They do what they want, giving into their impulses, and expect other people to clear up the mess they make.

For a book centred around the Bright Young Things and their supposedly debauched parties and scandalous lives, the absence of action from the text is notable. The main character, Adam Fenwick-Symes, sleeps through two parties, and the Bright Young Things are constantly avoiding taking action on anything, despite appearing to others (society, the press, and the reader) to be at the centre of it. Examples of this avoidance include Adam sleeping through parties, Nina and Adam being absent from Agatha Runcible's funeral, and the Bright Young Things drinking at the bar during both the start of the motor car race and during Agatha's crash. Like an exclusive party for Hollywood VIPs, when the party is given its close-up, it appears rather lacking.

Also notable for its absence in the text is the almost complete lack of sex and sexuality, particularly of interest in a novel entitled: 'Vile Bodies'. Adam and Nina are engaged and become lovers, but neither seem particularly enthralled of it, particularly Nina, and neither seem excited by each other's bodies or have any sense of sexuality. As well as being disinterested in many things, (one example of common BTY slang being the word 'bogus') Adam and Nina seem disinterested in both their own bodies and other peoples, to such an extent that when Adam lays his head in Nina's lap at a party, a gesture that could have tillatious undertones is interpreted as childlike, when he promptly falls asleep and misses the party. The supposed orgies that the BYT's parties were scandalised for are also absent.

So for a novel lacking in character development and mainly devoid of plot, what is the attraction? One answer lies in its style. Waugh saw writing "not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me." (Introduction to Vile Bodies, Penguin Modern Classics edition).

Waugh keeps description to a minimum, and focuses on short superficial extracts of dialogue between a small cast of characters, very much like the reality TV show Made in Chelsea. If Vile Bodies were a reality show, it's no small stretch of the imagination to say MIC would be it, although the detachment of TV as a medium could run the risk of making Waugh's irony less pronounced. In terms of authorial style, none of the characters are particularly well developed, which can make it challenging for the reader to empathise with them. Like the content of gossip columnist Mr Chatterbox's column (in the novel the late Lord Balcairn, and after his suicide, Adam), Vile Bodies is brief but colourful. Waugh forgoes character development and plot, and makes use of dialogue as a means of satirising English society of the 1920s/30s. Many events in the novel are based on real events, such as the death of the leader of the house of lords, the lives of the Mitford sisters, and the Cavendish Hotel as a meeting point for many Bright Young Things.

I'd recommend this book to Evelyn Waugh fans, Fitzgerald fans, and anyone interested in the history of post-WW1 society in England. I'd also recommend this book to anyone interested in the role of dialogue in the novel, particularly when contrasted with plot and character development and what the implications of this can be for the reader.

Rating: 3/5. Buy the book: Paperback / Kindle / DVD. Follow me: Goodreads / Twitter / Bloglovin