Vile Bodies is Evelyn Waugh's darkly hilarious second novel, published in 1930. It's quite modern, especially when compared to some of Waugh's later work, and just might've been the first book to contain written-out telephone conversations.
The (slightly flimsy) plot concerns a group of wildly hedonistic Londoners known as the Bright Young People. Protagonist Adam Fenwick-Symes, an aspiring novelist, is determined to marry his sweetheart Nina. However, he can never seem to get the money together. Many of the characters were at least partly based on real people. Waugh himself was a sort of fringe member of that set.
In 2003 Stephen Fry directed a film version entitled Bright Young Things. Interestingly, that would've been the book's title, too, if Waugh hadn't deemed it too cliched.
"Tropes!" tittered the Bright Young People:
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: Implied in Simon Balcairn's fake, final article.
- Camp Gay: Miles Malpractice is an especially memorable example.
- Dedication: Waugh dedicated the book to "B.G. and D.G."... that is, his friends Bryan Guinness and Diana Guinness (the latter was born Diana Mitford, of the infamous Mitford sisters, and later became Diana Mosley).
- Driven to Suicide: After writing a scandalously inaccurate description of a party, poor Simon Balcairn gasses himself at home. The narrator's nonchalance gives this scene an amusing air.
- The Flapper: wild party girl Agatha probably qualifies.
- Gallows Humor: Suicide, human trafficking, and excessive partying are all played for gleefully morbid laughs.
- Genteel Interbellum Setting
- Human Traffickers: Margot Metroland sells pretty young girls to Latin American brothels.
- Idle Rich: Many of the Bright Young People count.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Protagonist Adam Fenwick-Symes writes for a living.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The grim, gloomy ending was a side-effect of Waugh's unhappy love life (his first wife, also called Eveyln, left him for a better-looking man halfway through the writing of Vile Bodies).
- The Roaring '20s: The novel's setting, of course.
- Ruritania: Adam encounters the now-disposed King of Ruritania.
