by Evelyn Waugh
Rating: 4.50 (1 ratings)
First published 2003
Tony Last treasures his Gothic mansion Hetton Abbey above all else, but his wife Brenda finds their country life suffocating after seven years of marriage. She escapes to London, where she begins an affair with John Beaver, a vapid member of the Belgravia social circle. Brenda chooses the glittering but hollow world of fashionable society over her devoted husband and their ancestral home. Waugh weaves together moments of absurd comedy with genuine heartbreak as Tony's world crumbles around him. The novel captures the reckless spirit of the generation caught between two world wars, when traditional values collapsed and nothing meaningful replaced them. What begins as marital discord becomes a meditation on the breakdown of an entire social order, told through the destruction of one man's faith in love and duty.
Genres: fiction, classic-literature, 20th-century, british-literature
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: breakdown-of-society, destruction-of-faith
Setting: Hetton Abbey, London, Belgravia
Period: Between World Wars
221 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Penguin