THE FOXGLOVE SAGA

Auberon Waugh is the son of Evelyn Waugh. He has written a comic novel very much in the style of his father's earlier books and the result is very successful. The Foxglove Saga is largely episodic and this enables the author to extend his areas of irreverence though it also accounts for a number of loose ends. Few representations of the Establishment are left untouched by Mr. Waugh's sardonic treatment: there is Lady Foxglove herself, addicted to Good Works and aperitifs of Lourdes water and orange juice; her priggish son Martin, an abominably flawless paragon; Martin's school friend, the unfortunate, ugly and unloved Kenneth Stout, the son of a dentist who had once had a suspicious relationship with Sir Derek Foxglove; Dooney, a medical student who blackmailed Lady Foxglove into adopting his monstrous infant after the child had scratched out his mother's eyes; and the pathetic Mrs. Dooney who took to incorporating her absurd fantasies into novels. Eventually most of these balmy characters come to disgraceful, if not, macabre ends and in the process the author has humorously exposed and exaggerated some of the sillier aspects of institutional life -- in the Church, the Old School, the Army, the Professions, etc., etc.