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A review by zefrog
A Bed of Flowers, or, As You Like It by Auberon Waugh
2.0
I hadn't spotted that this was a modern retelling of Shakespeare's As You Like It when I picked up this book to read it. The Shakespearian elements are however very apparent throughout the book and I fairly quickly got an inkling of Waugh's inspiration.
Methusalem, with all his hundreds of years, was but a mushroom of a night's growth to this Day, and all the four monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings and Queens of the world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, all in one morning...
The story, which is divided in three parts and takes its title from On Eternity, a sermon by John Donne (above - included as an epigraph), has been transposed to Britain in the late 1960's. It starts at a not-quite-fashionable party during election night in 1966, as Wilson's Labour gets elected on what seems to be a wave of hope, and follows its characters as they grapple more or less convincingly with various moral dilemmas for the next year or so. Most of the 'action' takes place in a derelict farm near Glastonbury, while the onset of the Biafra war is referenced throughout. The epilogue is set at the same, even-less-successful party, on the following election night in 1970, as Heath's Tories are announced as the victorious forces of the status quo.
Waugh uses Shakespeare's characters and general plot line to pass a desultory judgement on British society at the end of a prosperous couple of decades, as the wheels start to come off the wagon. His vision is suitably cynical and disillusioned as he denounces the futility of contemporary pursuits and the toxicity of society's recognised pillars (politics, business, religion, consumerism).
The author reflects on the quest for happiness and what it might mean in a world newly transformed by money and technology, but, I feel, never really provides a definite argument. He seems to be hovering between a timid version of "carpe diem' and the more stoic conclusion that "this too shall pass" ; that our travails, however important they seem to us, don't matter that much in the great scheme of things, highlighting the overarching transience and entropy of the world. Though he generally seems to be leaning towards the left and a return to simpler aspirations, the philosophising he presents to the reader through his characters is often muddled and contradictory, and tends towards the repetitive.
Waugh is witty, though not outrightly funny, and like all political satires, there is necessary level of unreality pervading a book also infused with a sense of the absurd. This very artificiality was a turn off for me. I could not relate to the characters, and, their preoccupations, though certainly not completely outdated, felt of their time, which is possibly where this book should remain.
Methusalem, with all his hundreds of years, was but a mushroom of a night's growth to this Day, and all the four monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings and Queens of the world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, all in one morning...
The story, which is divided in three parts and takes its title from On Eternity, a sermon by John Donne (above - included as an epigraph), has been transposed to Britain in the late 1960's. It starts at a not-quite-fashionable party during election night in 1966, as Wilson's Labour gets elected on what seems to be a wave of hope, and follows its characters as they grapple more or less convincingly with various moral dilemmas for the next year or so. Most of the 'action' takes place in a derelict farm near Glastonbury, while the onset of the Biafra war is referenced throughout. The epilogue is set at the same, even-less-successful party, on the following election night in 1970, as Heath's Tories are announced as the victorious forces of the status quo.
Waugh uses Shakespeare's characters and general plot line to pass a desultory judgement on British society at the end of a prosperous couple of decades, as the wheels start to come off the wagon. His vision is suitably cynical and disillusioned as he denounces the futility of contemporary pursuits and the toxicity of society's recognised pillars (politics, business, religion, consumerism).
The author reflects on the quest for happiness and what it might mean in a world newly transformed by money and technology, but, I feel, never really provides a definite argument. He seems to be hovering between a timid version of "carpe diem' and the more stoic conclusion that "this too shall pass" ; that our travails, however important they seem to us, don't matter that much in the great scheme of things, highlighting the overarching transience and entropy of the world. Though he generally seems to be leaning towards the left and a return to simpler aspirations, the philosophising he presents to the reader through his characters is often muddled and contradictory, and tends towards the repetitive.
Waugh is witty, though not outrightly funny, and like all political satires, there is necessary level of unreality pervading a book also infused with a sense of the absurd. This very artificiality was a turn off for me. I could not relate to the characters, and, their preoccupations, though certainly not completely outdated, felt of their time, which is possibly where this book should remain.