I had not read Waugh before, thinking he would be rather boring. I found this book, A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, in the estate of my father, who had better taste. So, I almost had to miss this beauty.

A young upper-class English family with one child leads a tame life. Pampered by butlers, gardeners and other household staff, the days drag by. One hits the booze early and uses lunches and dinners out of doors at clubs where you must be seen.

When his wife Brenda cheats, wanting to divorce him and pick him bald, Tony only seems to wake up. He refuses further cooperation with the divorce and leaves on a voyage of discovery to Central America.

In London, dinner is served at 2100 hours. Tony is in the middle of the Brazilian jungle. At first, he drinks chocolate milk before bed, but slowly, a catastrophe unfolds. The local guides abandon him and Dr. Messinger, his companion on the trip.

Brenda’s affair does not end well either.

Tony falls ill and hallucinates a stream of trivialities from his former sedate life. While hallucinating, he reaches the city, the trek’s goal through the jungle. But even the city turns out to be a hallucination. He is picked up by a white man left behind in the jungle. This man takes him hostage and wants Tony to keep reading to him forever from the books of Dickens that he cannot read.

In England, Tony’s cousin has inherited his big house Hetton and continues Tony’s sedate life.