Vile Bodies

Great opening line:

It was clearly going to be a bad crossing.

So begins Evelyn Waugh's, Vile Bodies, which I am just finishing up. As the author notes in the beginning, while the book is not a sequel to Decline and Fall, it does feature many of the same characters. That includes Lady Metroland, formerly Margot Betsy-Chestwynde, who is forever offering disadvantaged young girls excellent working opportunities in her "entertainment businesses" in South America.

This book is even more frenetic and scathing than its chronological predecessor. A little bit dizzying to read, since it almost encourages you to read faster and faster until you're tripping over the pages as you turn them.

For the record, I'm a Paul Pennyfeather partisan, not an Adam Symes advocate.