Work Suspended and Other Stories together with Scott-King's Modern Europe is a collection of short stories by Evelyn Waugh. Everything in this book is also contained in The Complete Short Stories (published by Penguin).

The book was originally published as 'Work Suspended'; the elaborate title came about when a later edition added 'Scott-King's Modern Europe'.

The most substantial story, 'Work Suspended', is the novel Waugh was writing when war was declared on Germany in 1939; the title is descriptive -- that is, he suspended work on it and never finished it. It begins the story of thriller writer John Plant, his efforts to steal his friend's wife Lucy, and his relationship with Atwater, the man who killed Plant's father more or less accidentally. There's a one-page postscript which wraps everything up, revealing that all the plot threads came to nothing due to the upheavals created by the war. Atwater is one of the highlights of the story, and it seemed he was to become more involved if it had been continued. Basil Seal, from Black Mischief and Put Out More Flags, is also a minor character. The first person narration, the details of the narrator's relationship with his father, the move away from satire, and the occasional 'beautiful sentence', foreshadow Brideshead Revisited. I liked it very much. It might have been among my favourite Waughs if it had been finished.

'Scott-King's Modern Europe', the story of a dull schoolteacher's obsession with a dull seventeenth century poet, and how it entangles him with a post war European dictatorship, is the other highlight.

Otherwise, the stories are mostly good but don't match the quality of Waugh's novels. Some have cruel twists, reminiscent of Saki, but rather predictable (especially, I suppose, if you've read a lot of 'twist' stories). 'Excursion in Reality', about an impoverished young writer's movie career, is the best of them, and reminded me of Vile Bodies. 'An Englishman's Home', about village gentry resisting the encroach of modernity, is fun. ( )