CHARLES RYDER'S SCHOOL DAYS AND OTHER STORIES
by Evelyn Waugh
The title piece is the only new material here: a recently discovered fragment from a novel Waugh never finished—about the pre-Oxford life of Charles Ryder of Brideshead Revisited. Devotees of Brideshead, perhaps, will find it intriguing—though, to an even greater extent than elsewhere, the Charles Ryder here (reacting to schoolboy bullying and such) is awfully bland. The remainder of the volume, however, is a welcome reprint of Mr. Loveday's Little Outing (a 1936 limited edition)—and it includes the finely black-comic title story; an alternative (lesser) ending to Handful of Dust; several society-satires in the Vile Bodies vein; and a sort-of-sequel to Black Mischief, "Incident in Azania." Minor Waugh, to be sure (especially the Ryder rediscovery), but with occasional bursts of inspired nastiness and superb prose.