Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Back Bay Books (2008), 351 pages
Description
Written at the end of the World War II, this work mourns the passing of the aristocratic world which Waugh knew in his youth and recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by the austerities of war.
Similar in this library
Media reviews
Times Literary Supplement
Evelyn Waugh was a marvellous writer, but one of a sort peculiarly likely to write a bad book at any moment. The worst of his, worse even than The Loved One, must be Brideshead Revisited. But long before the Granada TV serial came along it was his most enduringly popular novel; the current Penguin
Show More
reprint is the nineteenth in its line. The chief reason for this success is obviously and simply that here we have a whacking, heavily romantic book about nobs...
It is as if Evelyn Waugh came to believe that since about all he looked for in his companions was wealth, rank, Roman Catholicism (where possible) and beauty (where appropriate), those same attributes and no more would be sufficient for the central characters in a long novel, enough or getting on for enough, granted a bit of style thrown in, to establish them as both glamorous and morally significant. That last blurring produced a book I would rather expect a conscientious Catholic to find repulsive, but such matters are none of my concern. Certainly the author treats those characters with an almost cringing respect, implying throughout that they are important and interesting in some way over and above what we are shown of them. Show Less
Observer
Brideshead Revisited fulfils the quest for certainty, though the image of a Catholic aristocracy, with its penumbra of a remote besieged chivalry, a secular hierarchy threatened by the dirty world but proudly falling back on a prepared eschatological position, has seemed over-romantic, even
Show More
sentimental, to non-Catholic readers. It remains a soldier's dream, a consolation of drab days and a deprived palate, disturbingly sensuous, even slavering with gulosity, as though God were somehow made manifest in the haute cuisine. The Puritan that lurks in every English Catholic was responsible for the later redaction of the book, the pruning of the poetry of self-indulgence. Show Less
New York Times
Snobbery is the charge most often levelled against Brideshead; and, at first glance, it is also the least damaging. Modern critics have by now accused practically every pre-modern novelist of pacifism, or collaboration, in the class war. Such objections are often simply anachronistic, telling us
Show More
more about present-day liberal anxieties than about anything else. But this line won’t quite work for Brideshead, which squarely identifies egalitarianism as its foe and proceeds to rubbish it accordingly...
‘I have been here before’: the opening refrain is from Rossetti, and much of the novel reads like a golden treasury of neo-classical clichés: phantoms, soft airs, enchanted gardens, winged hosts – the liturgical rhythms, the epic similes, the wooziness. Waugh’s conversion was a temporary one, and never again did he attempt the grand style. Certainly the prose sits oddly with the coldness and contempt at the heart of the novel, and contributes crucially to its central imbalance. Show Less
The Times
"Lush and evocative ... the one Waugh which best expresses at once the profundity of change and the indomitable endurance of the human spirit."
The New Yorker
The new novel by Evelyn Waugh—Brideshead Revisited—has been a bitter blow to this critic. I have admired and praised Mr. Waugh, and when I began reading Brideshead Revisited, I was excited at finding that he had broken away from the comic vein for which he is famous and expanded into a new
For Waugh’s snobbery, hitherto held in check by his satirical point of view, has here emerged shameless and rampant... In the meantime, I predict that Brideshead Revisited will prove to be the most successful, the only extremely successful, book that Evelyn Waugh has written, and that it will soon be up in the best-seller list somewhere between The Black Rose and The Manatee.
Show More
dimension... But this enthusiasm is to be cruelly disappointed. What happens when Evelyn Waugh abandons his comic convention—as fundamental to his previous work as that of any Restoration dramatist—turns out to be more or less disastrous...For Waugh’s snobbery, hitherto held in check by his satirical point of view, has here emerged shameless and rampant... In the meantime, I predict that Brideshead Revisited will prove to be the most successful, the only extremely successful, book that Evelyn Waugh has written, and that it will soon be up in the best-seller list somewhere between The Black Rose and The Manatee.
Show Less
"Brideshead Revisited" has the depth and weight that are found in a writer working in his prime, in the full powers of an eager, good mind and a skilled hand, retaining the best of what he has already learned. It tells an absorbing story in imaginative terms. By indirection it summarizes and
Show More
comments upon a time and a society. It has an almost romantic sense of wonder, together with the provocative, personal point of view of a writer who sees life realistically. It is, in short, a large, inclusive novel with which the 1946 season begins, a novel more fully realized than any of the year now ending, whatever their other virtues. Show Less
The details, particularly in the Oxford years of Sebastian and Ryder, have much of the graceful, astringent satire one associates with Waugh; the latter half, with the disintegration of Sebastian, the abnegation of Julia, is saddening even though Waugh does not wholly convince one with the validity
Show More
of the Catholic viewpoint. And not to be forgotten, there is the fascination of the fluent facility of Waugh's prose, shaped by a practised observation and a civilised intellect.... This for your sophisticated readers. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member atimco
The first thing you ought to know about Brideshead Revisited is that its author, Evelyn Waugh, is a man. I forget how I found that out, but it’s a tricky little thing for English majors who might accidentally talk about the man as if he were a woman, and thus expose their ignorance. Instead, now
Waugh reads like a masculine Daphne du Maurier, sensitive and atmospheric. I listened to this story on audiobook, read by Jeremy Irons, who also played in the 1981 adaptation as Charles Ryder. I have not seen any film/TV adaptations of this story, but I have heard that they differ widely from the book. For this audiobook, Irons' reading is superb, and he gently teases out all the poetic nuances of the language. He also gives each character a distinct voice, which is harder than it sounds.
The story itself is rather loose and follows the lives of the Marchmains, a well-to-do Catholic family in post World War I England. They are seen through the eyes of their friend Charles Ryder, our narrator, who becomes friends with the second son, Sebastian, at Oxford. Slowly their lives unfold against the bigger backdrop of world events, culminating with World War II. We start off with Charles’ experiences in the war and the rest of the book tells us how he came to that point. And yet it isn’t about him, really. It’s about the Marchmain family.
The characters are all very complex and carefully drawn, and the relationships between them are fascinating. There is Lady Marchmain, that calm, seraphic woman, unshakeable but somehow threatening in her faith; Julia, the stylish and ambitious daughter of the house; Brideshead, the oldest son whose face looks like it was carved by an Aztec artist; Cordelia, the precocious youngest daughter; and Lord Marchmain, who has lived abroad with his mistress since World War I. And there is Sebastian, of course, a figure of fun at Oxford with his teddy bear Aloysius, but later a tragic character, tangled in his own bonds.
We learn about Charles himself bit by bit and only really in light of the bigger story he is telling of the Marchmains. Most of the time Charles is very laconic, but other times something breaks loose and he launches into lyrical prose, flying higher and higher on the wings of semi-colons and commas. It sounds funny put like that, but it reads powerfully because Waugh has something to say. I found it wonderful to listen to.
If I had to pin down an overarching theme in this book, it would be the slow, inescapable return to God. The Roman Catholicism of the Marchmain family is examined from every angle. Charles is agnostic and later comes to see it as a threat. Sebastian, Julia, and Cordelia all talk at some point in the novel about their religious upbringing and its long, tolling echoes in their lives.
I really enjoyed Waugh's poetic style. There are some wonderful, thought-provoking passages in this book:
“How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation, Dresden figures of pastoral gaiety! Our wisdom, we prefer to think, is all of our own gathering, while, if truth be told, it is, most of it, the last coin of a legacy that dwindles with time.” (p. 62)
“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what’s been taught and what’s been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn’t know existed.” (p. 193)
“Perhaps, I thought, as her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke — a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace — perhaps all our lives are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.” (p. 303)
“You know I’m not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But to-day I saw there was one thing unforgivable — like things in the schoolroom, so bad they are unpunishable, that only Mummy could deal with — the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s.” (p. 340).
Some things are still ambiguous at the end (did Charles come to faith or not?). I’m fairly sure he did, but that could just be my personal bias toward belief. I've deliberately avoided reading other reviews before writing this one, to muddle it out myself. The ambiguity is part of why the story works, apart from the fantastic character studies and poetic language. There actually is an important idea at the bottom of it all, and instead of handing you the answers neatly like a catechism, this story forces you to think it out for yourself.
A beautiful, heavy, searching book.
Show More
you can feel smug that you won't be fooled by the first name.Waugh reads like a masculine Daphne du Maurier, sensitive and atmospheric. I listened to this story on audiobook, read by Jeremy Irons, who also played in the 1981 adaptation as Charles Ryder. I have not seen any film/TV adaptations of this story, but I have heard that they differ widely from the book. For this audiobook, Irons' reading is superb, and he gently teases out all the poetic nuances of the language. He also gives each character a distinct voice, which is harder than it sounds.
The story itself is rather loose and follows the lives of the Marchmains, a well-to-do Catholic family in post World War I England. They are seen through the eyes of their friend Charles Ryder, our narrator, who becomes friends with the second son, Sebastian, at Oxford. Slowly their lives unfold against the bigger backdrop of world events, culminating with World War II. We start off with Charles’ experiences in the war and the rest of the book tells us how he came to that point. And yet it isn’t about him, really. It’s about the Marchmain family.
The characters are all very complex and carefully drawn, and the relationships between them are fascinating. There is Lady Marchmain, that calm, seraphic woman, unshakeable but somehow threatening in her faith; Julia, the stylish and ambitious daughter of the house; Brideshead, the oldest son whose face looks like it was carved by an Aztec artist; Cordelia, the precocious youngest daughter; and Lord Marchmain, who has lived abroad with his mistress since World War I. And there is Sebastian, of course, a figure of fun at Oxford with his teddy bear Aloysius, but later a tragic character, tangled in his own bonds.
We learn about Charles himself bit by bit and only really in light of the bigger story he is telling of the Marchmains. Most of the time Charles is very laconic, but other times something breaks loose and he launches into lyrical prose, flying higher and higher on the wings of semi-colons and commas. It sounds funny put like that, but it reads powerfully because Waugh has something to say. I found it wonderful to listen to.
If I had to pin down an overarching theme in this book, it would be the slow, inescapable return to God. The Roman Catholicism of the Marchmain family is examined from every angle. Charles is agnostic and later comes to see it as a threat. Sebastian, Julia, and Cordelia all talk at some point in the novel about their religious upbringing and its long, tolling echoes in their lives.
I really enjoyed Waugh's poetic style. There are some wonderful, thought-provoking passages in this book:
“How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation, Dresden figures of pastoral gaiety! Our wisdom, we prefer to think, is all of our own gathering, while, if truth be told, it is, most of it, the last coin of a legacy that dwindles with time.” (p. 62)
“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what’s been taught and what’s been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn’t know existed.” (p. 193)
“Perhaps, I thought, as her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke — a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace — perhaps all our lives are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.” (p. 303)
“You know I’m not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But to-day I saw there was one thing unforgivable — like things in the schoolroom, so bad they are unpunishable, that only Mummy could deal with — the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s.” (p. 340).
Some things are still ambiguous at the end (did Charles come to faith or not?). I’m fairly sure he did, but that could just be my personal bias toward belief. I've deliberately avoided reading other reviews before writing this one, to muddle it out myself. The ambiguity is part of why the story works, apart from the fantastic character studies and poetic language. There actually is an important idea at the bottom of it all, and instead of handing you the answers neatly like a catechism, this story forces you to think it out for yourself.
A beautiful, heavy, searching book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
Orwell said of this book, and I'm paraphrasing, that Waugh was as good a novelist as it is possible to be and still be wrong about everything. And politically? Yeah. Fuck. I could go through piece by piece and draw out strands of the deperate envy and desire for the freeness and self-centred moral
And yet, the craftsmanship is stunning, and you blush with shame to compare it to a novel with similar religious and explicitly working-class themes, like, um Jude the Obscure (yeah, different era, but I actually think it's more appropriate; Waugh is a throwback - he's certainly not a modernist - and the thematic parallels are in some ways striking, although Jude does double duty as Charles and Sebastian). Sebastian Flyte is perfect - I literally met that exact lambheaded younger son in Romania and was bowled over. The religious argument is well balanced, and if it boils down to "the sadness that breathes from our religion is easier to take than the sadness that breathes from your lack, because we have God to help with it," well, that's better than most apologists do, really.
But what absolutely slew me was the scene on board the boat. And then, you know that shiver that you get, that turns your stomach to water and your knees to aspic, when you're like "That's right. That's exactly what happens." When Celia is telling Charles that the kids made a welcome banner and he's blowing her off and I'm thinking, "This is not meant to be a sympathetic character," suddenly it hits: This is what this many years of reflexively upholding the expectations of others does. It makes you sad, and selfish, and cruel, and it's the story of the English novel, be it Charles and Julia or the grim and guilty in Greene or Jim Dixon with his spastic faces - hell, flashforward fifty years and in a collective-unconscious sort of way maybe it explains happyslapping and knife crime and the specific kind of British bling culture that Momus, say, always decries - or all the cold satisfaction of the British existential novel, where you end up with freedom andnothing else, and knowing you have to love but just unable - compare Fowles' Nicholas Urfe to whatsisname from The Age of Reason, maybe more pleasant and empty than cold and satisfying, which is maybe very French. Does the stunning drop in English religiosity have to do with the suffocating weight of society and Englishness that generations up to and including the boomers had to suffer on top of the suffocating weight of God?
Okay, I'll out with it: I've done some bad things lately, and lost sight of myself, and have been running, driven by guilt, for a long time. And I've been trying to sort it out lately, and I've been saying "It twists you." Guilt, obligations, etc. But my God, what if that just means, "It makes you English?
I have no idea how facetious I'm being. Give Brideshead a read and see if anything I've said here makes any more sense.
Show More
code that the old English aristocracy were enabled to develop and indulge by their arrogant position at the top. It's a real worry in this life - to what degree are the rich more real than you and me? How long can the working man go on taking the hits to his pride and his hopes and hell, his body that grind him down into a creature of compromise and weariness and insufficient self-love? I've struggled with it in my line - if you love art and literature and travel and not watching the game at Soprano's, then at some level you love the aristocratic sensibility, or to put it in humbler personal terms, Oak Bay and not Esquimalt. But it's systemic injustice that prevents us all from being aristocrats in our own selves, and that I truly believe. Waugh, on the other hand, writes about his young bloods coming back from Paris to jump into the General Strike on the wrong side and beat down the poor, and gives us "ha ha, so young we were, such carefree days of indiscretion." Well, I say damn them.And yet, the craftsmanship is stunning, and you blush with shame to compare it to a novel with similar religious and explicitly working-class themes, like, um Jude the Obscure (yeah, different era, but I actually think it's more appropriate; Waugh is a throwback - he's certainly not a modernist - and the thematic parallels are in some ways striking, although Jude does double duty as Charles and Sebastian). Sebastian Flyte is perfect - I literally met that exact lambheaded younger son in Romania and was bowled over. The religious argument is well balanced, and if it boils down to "the sadness that breathes from our religion is easier to take than the sadness that breathes from your lack, because we have God to help with it," well, that's better than most apologists do, really.
But what absolutely slew me was the scene on board the boat. And then, you know that shiver that you get, that turns your stomach to water and your knees to aspic, when you're like "That's right. That's exactly what happens." When Celia is telling Charles that the kids made a welcome banner and he's blowing her off and I'm thinking, "This is not meant to be a sympathetic character," suddenly it hits: This is what this many years of reflexively upholding the expectations of others does. It makes you sad, and selfish, and cruel, and it's the story of the English novel, be it Charles and Julia or the grim and guilty in Greene or Jim Dixon with his spastic faces - hell, flashforward fifty years and in a collective-unconscious sort of way maybe it explains happyslapping and knife crime and the specific kind of British bling culture that Momus, say, always decries - or all the cold satisfaction of the British existential novel, where you end up with freedom andnothing else, and knowing you have to love but just unable - compare Fowles' Nicholas Urfe to whatsisname from The Age of Reason, maybe more pleasant and empty than cold and satisfying, which is maybe very French. Does the stunning drop in English religiosity have to do with the suffocating weight of society and Englishness that generations up to and including the boomers had to suffer on top of the suffocating weight of God?
Okay, I'll out with it: I've done some bad things lately, and lost sight of myself, and have been running, driven by guilt, for a long time. And I've been trying to sort it out lately, and I've been saying "It twists you." Guilt, obligations, etc. But my God, what if that just means, "It makes you English?
I have no idea how facetious I'm being. Give Brideshead a read and see if anything I've said here makes any more sense.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Whisper1
Previous books I've read by this author led me to believe I did not want to pursue others. Therefore, I was surprised that I enjoyed this book which seemed to be somewhat autobiographical regarding what I've read of Waugh. Namely, that he questioned his sexuality, that he converted to Catholicism
Because the book is so rich in detail, in poetic descriptions and story line, I'm glad I read it, but because of these very things, I struggle to adequately convey thoughts and feelings.
It is a book first and foremost regarding Catholic religion, the ties that bind and that provide a tether from which, like a dog on a chain, the illusion of freedom when you run brings sudden pain when the one fleeing is suddenly, painfully snapped back within boundaries.
The story is told by Charles Ryder when in Pre-WWII England he leaves his cold, emotionally detached widowed father to aimlessly attend Oxford. There he meets the antithesis of his father in the flamboyant, emotionally raw Lord Sebastian Flyte. We then observe Sebastian's family through the eyes of Charles who is both detached, and yet drawn into the opulence and glory that money can buy.
Lord Sebastian is but one of the well developed characters in this book, others include Sebastian's obsessively religious mother Lady Marchmain, his father who fled the Catholic controlled wife to live with his mistress in Venice, and his young beautiful sister Lady Julia Flyte who at first rebels against the confines of Catholicism but later cannot escape and cannot snap the collar and yoke that tie her.
When visiting the ancestral sweeping mansion of Brideshead, Charles is immediately taken in by the glory of the beauty of the house, the surroundings, Sebastian and Julia.
In a complicated triangle, Charles is drawn to both Julia and Sebastian.
As Sebastian spins out of control in an alcoholic, painful stupor, his actions show Charles how much Sebastian's Catholic rule bound mother has damaged this feminine, gentle, feeling soul.
Rich in detail and in subtle nuances while at the same time painting a brightly colored, multi-faceted landscape of characters and depth, this is Waugh's masterpiece.
Recommended.
Show More
and that while shining a scathing light in dark corners, still, he was enamored with the high society of which he bashed.Because the book is so rich in detail, in poetic descriptions and story line, I'm glad I read it, but because of these very things, I struggle to adequately convey thoughts and feelings.
It is a book first and foremost regarding Catholic religion, the ties that bind and that provide a tether from which, like a dog on a chain, the illusion of freedom when you run brings sudden pain when the one fleeing is suddenly, painfully snapped back within boundaries.
The story is told by Charles Ryder when in Pre-WWII England he leaves his cold, emotionally detached widowed father to aimlessly attend Oxford. There he meets the antithesis of his father in the flamboyant, emotionally raw Lord Sebastian Flyte. We then observe Sebastian's family through the eyes of Charles who is both detached, and yet drawn into the opulence and glory that money can buy.
Lord Sebastian is but one of the well developed characters in this book, others include Sebastian's obsessively religious mother Lady Marchmain, his father who fled the Catholic controlled wife to live with his mistress in Venice, and his young beautiful sister Lady Julia Flyte who at first rebels against the confines of Catholicism but later cannot escape and cannot snap the collar and yoke that tie her.
When visiting the ancestral sweeping mansion of Brideshead, Charles is immediately taken in by the glory of the beauty of the house, the surroundings, Sebastian and Julia.
In a complicated triangle, Charles is drawn to both Julia and Sebastian.
As Sebastian spins out of control in an alcoholic, painful stupor, his actions show Charles how much Sebastian's Catholic rule bound mother has damaged this feminine, gentle, feeling soul.
Rich in detail and in subtle nuances while at the same time painting a brightly colored, multi-faceted landscape of characters and depth, this is Waugh's masterpiece.
Recommended.
Show Less
LibraryThing member camillahoel
Brideshead Revisited, I imagine, is one of those books you would read very differently depending on how you feel about the Catholic church.
To me, an atheist to my core, it is a book about nostalgia and a desperate, futile attempt to grasp what is gone. This reading makes sense to me, but I know
The fact that this book accommodates two diametrically opposed impressions is part of the reason why it is so good. It never attempts to hammer home a point; it lays itself open to the reader in a way too few books do.
I would not want you to get the wrong impression from what I have just said. The book is delightful. Especially the description of the early days at Oxford and Brideshead. I suppose it goes somewhat with the territory. A novel about nostalgia could do worse than make its reader nostalgic for the happy past dominating the life of its central character.
It is the story of Charles Ryder. The subtitle of ``The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'' is not appended to my edition. It may be one of those things that Waugh excised in his revision. Charles Ryder goes to Oxford, meets Sebastian and his dandified set of young men (and Aloysius, his teddy bear), drinks wine, is happy; and is then slowly drawn into the family circle and the unpleasant manipulative currents within it. And then he grows up. And life becomes a little more grey, a little more mundane. Gay abandon becomes dipsomania, and it is all framed by the position of the England of the Second World War.
My edition is Waugh's revised 1959 version of the book. In a preface he explains the changes made, saying that
It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster -- the period of soy beans and Basic English -- and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful.
I can only conclude that I had better get my hands on the original 1945 version of the book. As a student, living on no money, and surrounded by the current use of language, I cannot help but feel something approaching that desire for fantasies of wonderful food and wine and delicious ornamental language which I imagine Waugh felt towards the end of the war. The dandified attention to beauty and the rejection of the values dictated by the world of Serious people appeals to me. And my feelings as it disappears into a steadily more dejected, flat and unappealing present can be imagined.
But it is that depressing second half which makes this something more than delightful period candy. It turns it into a book about something real, about loss of something lovely and bright, and the attempt to hang onto it -- rather prefigured by Sebastian and Aloysius, I think.
To me, an atheist to my core, it is a book about nostalgia and a desperate, futile attempt to grasp what is gone. This reading makes sense to me, but I know
Show More
those who take the author's Catholicism into account read parts of it (especially the ending, I suppose) in a more positive, although I hesitate to say "upbeat", way. Waugh claims it is about ``the operations of divine grace on a group of closely connected characters''. I find it is a book about having experienced happiness and a futile attempt to later grasp at any reminder of that happiness available. The fact that this book accommodates two diametrically opposed impressions is part of the reason why it is so good. It never attempts to hammer home a point; it lays itself open to the reader in a way too few books do.
I would not want you to get the wrong impression from what I have just said. The book is delightful. Especially the description of the early days at Oxford and Brideshead. I suppose it goes somewhat with the territory. A novel about nostalgia could do worse than make its reader nostalgic for the happy past dominating the life of its central character.
It is the story of Charles Ryder. The subtitle of ``The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'' is not appended to my edition. It may be one of those things that Waugh excised in his revision. Charles Ryder goes to Oxford, meets Sebastian and his dandified set of young men (and Aloysius, his teddy bear), drinks wine, is happy; and is then slowly drawn into the family circle and the unpleasant manipulative currents within it. And then he grows up. And life becomes a little more grey, a little more mundane. Gay abandon becomes dipsomania, and it is all framed by the position of the England of the Second World War.
My edition is Waugh's revised 1959 version of the book. In a preface he explains the changes made, saying that
It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster -- the period of soy beans and Basic English -- and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful.
I can only conclude that I had better get my hands on the original 1945 version of the book. As a student, living on no money, and surrounded by the current use of language, I cannot help but feel something approaching that desire for fantasies of wonderful food and wine and delicious ornamental language which I imagine Waugh felt towards the end of the war. The dandified attention to beauty and the rejection of the values dictated by the world of Serious people appeals to me. And my feelings as it disappears into a steadily more dejected, flat and unappealing present can be imagined.
But it is that depressing second half which makes this something more than delightful period candy. It turns it into a book about something real, about loss of something lovely and bright, and the attempt to hang onto it -- rather prefigured by Sebastian and Aloysius, I think.
Show Less
LibraryThing member sefkhet
The trouble with Brideshead Revisited was that I had done things in the wrong order. I had seen the film adaptation with Emma Thompson and had been entirely indifferent to it. It was so completely unremarkable that it was nearly three years before I got round to reading the book, and this book is
It's a coming-of-age story. It's a story for a better time. It isn't a romance, but it's a story about a love affair -- the love affair of Charles Ryder with the Marchmains. And the wonderful thing about this narrative is that it doesn't matter that the Marchmains are eccentric and destructive and deeply entrenched in Old Catholicism, a family that seems to be not quite of this world but having to live in it all the same, because when Charles starts to talk about his first memory of Brideshead, "more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer", we fall a little bit in love with them too.
It isn't a love story that we ever expect to have a happy ending. The long summer at Brideshead and the golden days at Oxford… even then, we know that this is in many ways an illusion and that it can't last forever. It doesn't matter though, not really, because in many ways, everything important about this book is said by Sebastian: "I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember."
Show More
many things but unremarkable is not one of them.It's a coming-of-age story. It's a story for a better time. It isn't a romance, but it's a story about a love affair -- the love affair of Charles Ryder with the Marchmains. And the wonderful thing about this narrative is that it doesn't matter that the Marchmains are eccentric and destructive and deeply entrenched in Old Catholicism, a family that seems to be not quite of this world but having to live in it all the same, because when Charles starts to talk about his first memory of Brideshead, "more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer", we fall a little bit in love with them too.
It isn't a love story that we ever expect to have a happy ending. The long summer at Brideshead and the golden days at Oxford… even then, we know that this is in many ways an illusion and that it can't last forever. It doesn't matter though, not really, because in many ways, everything important about this book is said by Sebastian: "I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember."
Show Less
LibraryThing member lkernagh
Brilliant. I didn't think that would be my reaction when I started listening to the audiobook narrated by Jeremy Irons, but darn it all, these very aloof and rather languid characters of what I consider to be very dysfunctional British upper class upbringing got under my skin, so much so that I was
Show More
stunned to discover I had reached the end of the story and was pinning for more. How the heck did that happen?! The characters don't make the most logical of choices - or do they? - but I came to develop a bond with Charles and the Marchmain family, contrary to any exceptions I may have had for the story. Waugh has captured perfectly the social-political-economic situations of the time period and, through his characterizations, raised questions regarding a number of topics, including religion, theology, politics, art, society and the war effort. Brideshead Revisited will hold a special place in my heart as witness to a time, place and family that is poignantly captured under the uncensored pen of an author I have been wary to read before now. Educational systems can do that to a reader. Blast them. This is also one of those rare time when I am wary of watching any movie adaptations, for fear that they will ruin what I now feel for this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member aaronbaron
It is with some misgivings that I admit how deeply Bridehead Revisited affects me. I take great delight in the icy knife work of earlier Waugh, the rejection of easy sentimentality, the censure of a narcissistic society, the unforgiving deadpan humor. Much of that diamond hard brilliance has
Yet I am clearly among the tenderhearted who love this book. It may very well become one of my favorite works of literature. Wit serves as an excellent antidote to a great deal of life’s dross and muck, but ultimately it cannot fulfill life itself. We need something more, and in Brideshead Revisited Waugh’s glorious acerbity is matched and ultimately overcome by, of all things, love. Our hero, Charles Rider, narrates the story of his first love of friendship and youth, then his second love of sex and maturity, and finally, dimly, and much to my chagrin, a love that exceeds worldly desires.
Sound like treacle? It’s not. Waugh may have tempered his sardonic vision, but he has not abandoned it. The genius of this book lies in the tension between a full heart yearning to speak and sharp mind that suffers no fools. Moments of brilliant satire are mixed with passages of beautiful lyricism, sometimes in the very same sentence. It’s as if the usually gushing excesses of emotion have been channeled and forced to account for themselves in a clear language that any intelligent juror could understand. Yet even though these emotions have been shaped by reason and restraint, they never lose their fiery glow. If you abhor melodrama and cliché, and yet have ever managed to fall in love, this book strikes a resounding chord.
The other facet that saves Brideshead Revisited from disneyfication is it’s melancholy. While love may overcome one of the sharpest wits of English literature, Waugh knows full well that it is still mortal and will perish. This is ultimately a story about loss. In the end, a kindling of religious faith hints at redemption, but this is the only part of the book that truly disappointed me. It reminded me of Anna Karinina, another masterpiece that ended, against all my hopes and wishes, in a religious conversion experience. Waugh said that his soul was so acidic that he needed supernatural help just to be human, and I cannot begrudge a genius his solace, but I never found the notion of another world to be of any help in living a meaningful life in this one. We may very well end up burying our loves one by one, yet this world is much bigger than we are, and there are more riches in it that than one lifetime can ever exhaust.
Show More
softened in Bridehead Revisited, supplanted by creeping vines of romantic nostalgia and traditional Catholicism. I can well understand why many Waugh fans consider this book the beginning of the end. Yet I am clearly among the tenderhearted who love this book. It may very well become one of my favorite works of literature. Wit serves as an excellent antidote to a great deal of life’s dross and muck, but ultimately it cannot fulfill life itself. We need something more, and in Brideshead Revisited Waugh’s glorious acerbity is matched and ultimately overcome by, of all things, love. Our hero, Charles Rider, narrates the story of his first love of friendship and youth, then his second love of sex and maturity, and finally, dimly, and much to my chagrin, a love that exceeds worldly desires.
Sound like treacle? It’s not. Waugh may have tempered his sardonic vision, but he has not abandoned it. The genius of this book lies in the tension between a full heart yearning to speak and sharp mind that suffers no fools. Moments of brilliant satire are mixed with passages of beautiful lyricism, sometimes in the very same sentence. It’s as if the usually gushing excesses of emotion have been channeled and forced to account for themselves in a clear language that any intelligent juror could understand. Yet even though these emotions have been shaped by reason and restraint, they never lose their fiery glow. If you abhor melodrama and cliché, and yet have ever managed to fall in love, this book strikes a resounding chord.
The other facet that saves Brideshead Revisited from disneyfication is it’s melancholy. While love may overcome one of the sharpest wits of English literature, Waugh knows full well that it is still mortal and will perish. This is ultimately a story about loss. In the end, a kindling of religious faith hints at redemption, but this is the only part of the book that truly disappointed me. It reminded me of Anna Karinina, another masterpiece that ended, against all my hopes and wishes, in a religious conversion experience. Waugh said that his soul was so acidic that he needed supernatural help just to be human, and I cannot begrudge a genius his solace, but I never found the notion of another world to be of any help in living a meaningful life in this one. We may very well end up burying our loves one by one, yet this world is much bigger than we are, and there are more riches in it that than one lifetime can ever exhaust.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kant1066
For some reason, my choice in books has been leading me to those with obvious themes of decadence, decay, and destruction. In the past few weeks alone, I’ve read or finished Philip Rieff’s “Charisma: The Gift of Grace, and How It Has Been Taken Away From Us,” (Rieff manages to make Oswald
Picking up “Brideshead Revisited,” I had the odd feeling that it would end up being much like “Lucky Jim.” It would have its moments, but in the end it would be too peculiar to English mores and ways of life to translate very well for the American reader of the twenty-first century. My initial impression couldn’t have been more wrong. It is full of a beautiful pathos, a reverence and passion for those things that have been irrevocably lost, and contains a poignant portrait of a youthful relationship that will stick with me for a while.
The entire thing is a flashback; only in the prologue do we learn that the narrator, Charles Ryder, is actually remembering the novel retroactively twenty years in the future while serving as an officer in World War II. Like Proust’s, his memories are set off by a particular sensory experience, namely his bivouacking at Brideshead, the palatial residence of his best friend he met at Oxford, Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian comes from an incredibly wealthy family, and carries a teddy bear named Aloysius everywhere he goes. (It’s also pretty explicitly stated that Sebastian is a homosexual, and doesn’t bother hiding it.) He and Charles become fast friends on campus, often getting drunk together. Sebastian suggests that Charles meet his family, and he slowly develops relationships with Sebastian’s mother and siblings. Much of the novel contains beautiful descriptions of Brideshead and its invaluable art and architecture; Waugh even calls the first part of the book “Et in Arcadia Ego.” When Charles starts to develop friendships with his family members, his drinking quickly spirals out of control, and he starts to exhibit the typical symptoms of denial and drinking in private.
While Charles and Sebastian are agnostics, Sebastian’s family is immured in cultural Catholicism, which complicates his relationship within the family, especially Julia, Sebastian’s sister. There is even a beautiful art nouveau chapel on the estate which Julia and her mother visit often. This combined with Sebastian’s drinking leads to Charles’ estrangement from the family. Julia and Charles eventually enter into loveless marriages, but eventually plan to divorce their mutual spouses to marry one another. However, when the family patriarch, Lord Marchmain, comes back home from Italy to Brideshead to live his last days, there is tension between Julia and Charles about giving Lord Marchmain his last rites. Because of this, Julia decides that their marriage will be impossible. The epilogue returns to Ryder’s unexpected billet at Brideshead, where the prologue began, and where we learn that he’s lead a life as an architectural historian and draughtsman.
I thought this novel was stunning. Waugh paints a picture of England in the interwar years that is full of nostalgia, but is never maudlin or saccharine. It’s about loss – the loss of friendship, the loss of Catholic religion and traditional values, the loss of youth, and the loss of innocence. These are great themes, and Waugh treats them spectacularly. For some great insight into the feelings and intellectual currents that informs the characters, I highly recommend Richard Overy’s “The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars,” which topically discusses some of the cultural themes that informs much of the book.
Show More
Spengler look like Pippy Longstocking) Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” and now “Brideshead Revisited.” This wasn’t exactly planned out, but reading them so close together has been a wonderful experience, and not nearly as disheartening as one might think it would be.Picking up “Brideshead Revisited,” I had the odd feeling that it would end up being much like “Lucky Jim.” It would have its moments, but in the end it would be too peculiar to English mores and ways of life to translate very well for the American reader of the twenty-first century. My initial impression couldn’t have been more wrong. It is full of a beautiful pathos, a reverence and passion for those things that have been irrevocably lost, and contains a poignant portrait of a youthful relationship that will stick with me for a while.
The entire thing is a flashback; only in the prologue do we learn that the narrator, Charles Ryder, is actually remembering the novel retroactively twenty years in the future while serving as an officer in World War II. Like Proust’s, his memories are set off by a particular sensory experience, namely his bivouacking at Brideshead, the palatial residence of his best friend he met at Oxford, Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian comes from an incredibly wealthy family, and carries a teddy bear named Aloysius everywhere he goes. (It’s also pretty explicitly stated that Sebastian is a homosexual, and doesn’t bother hiding it.) He and Charles become fast friends on campus, often getting drunk together. Sebastian suggests that Charles meet his family, and he slowly develops relationships with Sebastian’s mother and siblings. Much of the novel contains beautiful descriptions of Brideshead and its invaluable art and architecture; Waugh even calls the first part of the book “Et in Arcadia Ego.” When Charles starts to develop friendships with his family members, his drinking quickly spirals out of control, and he starts to exhibit the typical symptoms of denial and drinking in private.
While Charles and Sebastian are agnostics, Sebastian’s family is immured in cultural Catholicism, which complicates his relationship within the family, especially Julia, Sebastian’s sister. There is even a beautiful art nouveau chapel on the estate which Julia and her mother visit often. This combined with Sebastian’s drinking leads to Charles’ estrangement from the family. Julia and Charles eventually enter into loveless marriages, but eventually plan to divorce their mutual spouses to marry one another. However, when the family patriarch, Lord Marchmain, comes back home from Italy to Brideshead to live his last days, there is tension between Julia and Charles about giving Lord Marchmain his last rites. Because of this, Julia decides that their marriage will be impossible. The epilogue returns to Ryder’s unexpected billet at Brideshead, where the prologue began, and where we learn that he’s lead a life as an architectural historian and draughtsman.
I thought this novel was stunning. Waugh paints a picture of England in the interwar years that is full of nostalgia, but is never maudlin or saccharine. It’s about loss – the loss of friendship, the loss of Catholic religion and traditional values, the loss of youth, and the loss of innocence. These are great themes, and Waugh treats them spectacularly. For some great insight into the feelings and intellectual currents that informs the characters, I highly recommend Richard Overy’s “The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars,” which topically discusses some of the cultural themes that informs much of the book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member zibilee
When Charles Ryder arrives at Brideshead after an absence of many years, he loses himself in reminiscences of the once grand home and residence of the intriguing Flyte family. Charles shares the story of his all-encompassing and complex relationship with the Flytes, which germinates with his
This book is a stunning piece of literature. From the rich language to the captivating story it tells, it is easy to understand why this book remains a classic today. Though the story is arguably about one young man's immersion in a very unique family, there exists, parallel to the plot, the subject of divine grace and the examination of Catholicism as a moral compass which may shape even those who are not of the faith. The book also deals with the nostalgia for the British nobility, the disillusionment at the passage of youth, and speaks specifically about the many forms of love that assail us as human beings throughout life. The remarkable thing about all of this is that it is not done in a heavy-handed and cardboard way. It is not pounded into you with antiquated and stuffy language or sentimental observations that render the story artificially affected. Instead, there is a constant pushing and pulling of ideas, and a honest portrayal of relationships, religion, and youth that is not afraid to show the entire truth, warts and all. Aside from liking this book for the story that it told, I found it was engaging and entertaining in other aspects. The prose was lyrical while still being a little snarky and standoffish, giving it an offbeat charm and a knowing voice. When I had finished reading and closed the book, I found that there was so much more to think about and explore within the world presented to me. I looked back at scenes that were poignant, and was able to see that besides the obvious emotional impact there was a great deal more hiding within the narrative. Later, I found concepts that hadn't initially occurred to me, and I mused about the authors intentions with the direction of the story, and if indeed there was a subtle agenda. The book had a wonderful mood about it as well. The atmosphere was one of somberness, but it was not overwhelmingly dark and depressive. Things seemed to have the perfect gravity, neither too comedic nor too dismal. This is not to say that this was an entirely dark book; there were some perfectly comedic and witty moments, but overall the tone of this book was more serious, lending it the ability to become profound. This may give the perception that this is a deep book. Yes and no. I would say that on one hand it is a very deep book, but it depends entirely on how you read it. If you are reading it for the pleasure of an interesting story, that is what you will get. If on the other hand you are reading it for a deeper meaning, that is there as well. What I find interesting is that these elements exist completely in harmony with each other, while also remaining separate entities.
I think the true measure of the success of this book is the fact that, although I have moved on to other books, I still find myself thinking about it. In quiet moments, I find myself plundering the depths of the story, eager to make more connections and relishing the moments and situations I found within the covers. The book had a powerful voice and message, and it was the ability of the author to show, not tell, his message that impressed and amazed me. The mechanics and eloquence of his ideas were equally impressive. Though the author's opinions may not be popular with every reader, and may even be contrary to those who are not particularly religious, the story and the execution are truly brilliant. This book was an exceptional and unexpected prize. Highly recommended.
Show More
college relationship with the eldest son, Sebastian, at Oxford. While sharing his opulent college days with Sebastian, the two become connoisseurs of fine food, good conversation, and especially in Sebastian's case, alcohol. Charles becomes unwittingly seduced by the luxurious lifestyle Sebastian leads, and although Sebastian tries to avoid the intrusion of his family into the friendship, Charles becomes enmeshed with them, growing increasingly entangled with their religious proclivities and emotional adversities. Eventually Charles moves past his friendship with Sebastian, who is on a course of self-destruction. Although he tries to leave Sebastian behind, his ties with the stifling family remain strong, and his ardor focuses on more accessible targets. As the glamor and artifice of the Flytes begins to fall away, Charles discovers his own moral awakenings, leaving him to reconcile the differences between himself and the Flytes as well as the similarities.This book is a stunning piece of literature. From the rich language to the captivating story it tells, it is easy to understand why this book remains a classic today. Though the story is arguably about one young man's immersion in a very unique family, there exists, parallel to the plot, the subject of divine grace and the examination of Catholicism as a moral compass which may shape even those who are not of the faith. The book also deals with the nostalgia for the British nobility, the disillusionment at the passage of youth, and speaks specifically about the many forms of love that assail us as human beings throughout life. The remarkable thing about all of this is that it is not done in a heavy-handed and cardboard way. It is not pounded into you with antiquated and stuffy language or sentimental observations that render the story artificially affected. Instead, there is a constant pushing and pulling of ideas, and a honest portrayal of relationships, religion, and youth that is not afraid to show the entire truth, warts and all. Aside from liking this book for the story that it told, I found it was engaging and entertaining in other aspects. The prose was lyrical while still being a little snarky and standoffish, giving it an offbeat charm and a knowing voice. When I had finished reading and closed the book, I found that there was so much more to think about and explore within the world presented to me. I looked back at scenes that were poignant, and was able to see that besides the obvious emotional impact there was a great deal more hiding within the narrative. Later, I found concepts that hadn't initially occurred to me, and I mused about the authors intentions with the direction of the story, and if indeed there was a subtle agenda. The book had a wonderful mood about it as well. The atmosphere was one of somberness, but it was not overwhelmingly dark and depressive. Things seemed to have the perfect gravity, neither too comedic nor too dismal. This is not to say that this was an entirely dark book; there were some perfectly comedic and witty moments, but overall the tone of this book was more serious, lending it the ability to become profound. This may give the perception that this is a deep book. Yes and no. I would say that on one hand it is a very deep book, but it depends entirely on how you read it. If you are reading it for the pleasure of an interesting story, that is what you will get. If on the other hand you are reading it for a deeper meaning, that is there as well. What I find interesting is that these elements exist completely in harmony with each other, while also remaining separate entities.
I think the true measure of the success of this book is the fact that, although I have moved on to other books, I still find myself thinking about it. In quiet moments, I find myself plundering the depths of the story, eager to make more connections and relishing the moments and situations I found within the covers. The book had a powerful voice and message, and it was the ability of the author to show, not tell, his message that impressed and amazed me. The mechanics and eloquence of his ideas were equally impressive. Though the author's opinions may not be popular with every reader, and may even be contrary to those who are not particularly religious, the story and the execution are truly brilliant. This book was an exceptional and unexpected prize. Highly recommended.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TurtleBoy
This somber yet delightful tale of one man's anomic quest for fulfillment and meaning in interwar Britain is the first of Waugh's works that I've read. (I'm now looking forward to reading some of his earlier, more satirical novels.) Waugh's hero Charles Ryder, no doubt fashioned
The reader is left wondering. This novel's brilliance stems more from what it doesn't say than from what it does; it's definitely worth the read. (Incidentally, bear with the Prologue; I found it the most tiresome part of the book. Thereafter the writing is as sharp as any English prose ever penned, particularly the opening chapters of the second book.)
Show More
semi-autobiographically, searches high and low for some evanescent thing (I'm not sure he knows exactly what) that's not to be found, not in academia, nor in art, nor in a sterile and unhappy marriage. Was it there in the Arcadia of his youth, an idyll visited by death? Will it rest in the newfound Catholic faith to which he turns in the book's closing pages?The reader is left wondering. This novel's brilliance stems more from what it doesn't say than from what it does; it's definitely worth the read. (Incidentally, bear with the Prologue; I found it the most tiresome part of the book. Thereafter the writing is as sharp as any English prose ever penned, particularly the opening chapters of the second book.)
Show Less
LibraryThing member ChocolateMuse
This, I think, is a very complicated novel, and my reaction to it is equally complicated. The language is quite beautiful, and at one point I actually got out a dictionary to look up a word or two, which is something I almost never do. These words were worth looking up, making the meaning and
This is the kind of book I'd like to study in a literature studies tutorial at university or something. It's a book about themes - nostalgia and change; love and beauty; friendship; death; faith; and the complications of family. I found it evocative and sad - not a comedy at all, though somehow I had the impression that Waugh wrote comedy, don't know why.
The character of Sebastian was particularly poignant for me. Sebastian as a young man, beautiful, carefree, but lost in the adult world - all adds a great deal of weight to the events of his later years. The latter half of the book had less of an effect, but I think that's more personal, and has more to do with who I am than the merit of the book itself.
Still, it was one of those books I was glad to finish - I didn't want it to keep on going forever. So... 'complicated' about sums it up.
Show More
nuances of the sentences even more memorable.This is the kind of book I'd like to study in a literature studies tutorial at university or something. It's a book about themes - nostalgia and change; love and beauty; friendship; death; faith; and the complications of family. I found it evocative and sad - not a comedy at all, though somehow I had the impression that Waugh wrote comedy, don't know why.
The character of Sebastian was particularly poignant for me. Sebastian as a young man, beautiful, carefree, but lost in the adult world - all adds a great deal of weight to the events of his later years. The latter half of the book had less of an effect, but I think that's more personal, and has more to do with who I am than the merit of the book itself.
Still, it was one of those books I was glad to finish - I didn't want it to keep on going forever. So... 'complicated' about sums it up.
Show Less
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
What a schizophrenic little novel this is. The story, in reminiscence, of the youth and young adulthood of Charles Ryder, a painter currently in the British wartime Army, making bivouac at a manor house he once frequented in "happier times", it is at times lovely, funny, touching; at other times
I think my greatest objection to the whole book is that it isn't a "whole". It's just parts. Things don't develop, they just happen. Our narrator is all about Sebastian (and just what does he SEE in him, anyway?) for 200 pages and then suddenly Sebastian is out of the picture, left to his inevitable disintegration apparently without qualm, and Charles has a wife we've never heard of before. Oh...wait...she's Boy Mulcaster's sister, just by the way. We've met Boy...but did he have a sister? Didn't matter if he did. But now it does. Then, suddenly, there's Sebastian's sister Julia back in Charles's life. And passion ensues. Inconvenient wife and unseen children dispatched easily enough...very little fuss. Younger sister, the lovely, delightful little Cordelia (who might have been the inspiration for Alan Bradley's Flavia DeLuce) has grown up quite changed, for the author's convenience, I suppose, as again we do not SEE any development there...just the end result. But she's necessary to tell us, in a tedious monologue, just what's become of Sebastian while our backs were turned.
I enjoyed it thoroughly, especially the audio, for the first two-thirds; the final book, however, was a trial. Irons was still excellent in his narration, but even he couldn't make Julia's "living in sin" monologue palatable in any way. As a portrait of dissolute Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead works very well. As a "mannerly" novel, again, much of it is fine, fine, fine. But as Story, it failed utterly for me. I wouldn't care if it hadn't seemed to be trying to tell a story.
Show More
melodramatic, monotonous, cringe-worthy. To be fair, Waugh does warn us with his subtitle, "The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder".I think my greatest objection to the whole book is that it isn't a "whole". It's just parts. Things don't develop, they just happen. Our narrator is all about Sebastian (and just what does he SEE in him, anyway?) for 200 pages and then suddenly Sebastian is out of the picture, left to his inevitable disintegration apparently without qualm, and Charles has a wife we've never heard of before. Oh...wait...she's Boy Mulcaster's sister, just by the way. We've met Boy...but did he have a sister? Didn't matter if he did. But now it does. Then, suddenly, there's Sebastian's sister Julia back in Charles's life. And passion ensues. Inconvenient wife and unseen children dispatched easily enough...very little fuss. Younger sister, the lovely, delightful little Cordelia (who might have been the inspiration for Alan Bradley's Flavia DeLuce) has grown up quite changed, for the author's convenience, I suppose, as again we do not SEE any development there...just the end result. But she's necessary to tell us, in a tedious monologue, just what's become of Sebastian while our backs were turned.
I enjoyed it thoroughly, especially the audio, for the first two-thirds; the final book, however, was a trial. Irons was still excellent in his narration, but even he couldn't make Julia's "living in sin" monologue palatable in any way. As a portrait of dissolute Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead works very well. As a "mannerly" novel, again, much of it is fine, fine, fine. But as Story, it failed utterly for me. I wouldn't care if it hadn't seemed to be trying to tell a story.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
I joked to a friend I knew I was back in literary-land again at the reappearance of all the semi-colons. In fact, there doesn't seem much difference in style, and not much in voice, between this 1944 novel by Waugh and Bronte's 1853 novel Villette which I read recently. Both have elegant, rather
For all of that the Flytes' religion as depicted in the book seemed more the source of needless tragedy than strength for each of them, driving them to lives hopeless and loveless. It could be that given I'm tone deaf on spiritual subjects--I do try to understand what is so important in so many lives but I admit it's pretty lost on me--that this just isn't a theme that could resonate with me. That may be why the ending fell flat with me and felt so unsatisfying. Nor did I find it the moving experience that my friend who recommended it to me did. I don't know I can say I much identified or sympathized with any of the characters, who seemed the cause of their own destruction despite all their privileges and gifts. They lived in a very rarefied atmosphere indeed of tea and crumpets, fox-hunting, old piles with private chapels, footmen, valets, nannies and chauffeurs. Sebastian, who charms almost everyone, from almost all the characters in the book to many readers, left me rather cold. The narrator, an indifferent parent and husband, left me colder. He laments a dying world where "wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity." The kind of aristocratic wealth and power a tiny few were born to, but almost no one could or did earn, so again I think the nostalgia for that lost world was something for which I felt a decided lack. Yet note I rated this novel fairly highly. It did have the rather voyeuristic thrill of a Downton Abbey world, at times deliciously gossipy and eccentric, almost satiric (especially in the first part), and there is the almost Victorian gleam of Waugh's prose, wit, and rather biting social commentary. I did read it with pleasure and it sped past while I was transported to another world.
Show More
plush prose styles with a leisurely pace and fondness for extended metaphor, both are very, very English, told through first person narrators and both deal with Catholic themes. Villette harshly critiqued Roman Catholicism from an English Protestant point of view, its narrator Lucy Snowe seeing it as bearing a fruit of "ignorance, abasement, and bigotry." Evelyn Waugh's Charles Ryder is presumably of Protestant roots but calls himself an agnostic--and he falls more than a little in love with the entire Catholic Flyte family and their faith. They, of course, are differently situated than the Belgium Catholics in Villette as English Catholics in between the two world wars. Catholics in England had been persecuted for centuries and barred from public life from "Elizabeth’s reign till Victoria’s." A bit isolated, discriminated against, especially in aristocratic circles marrying within only a few families, their situation reminded me more of the Jewish experience in recent centuries than that of Christians in Christian dominated countries. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism so naturally his view is more positive than Bronte's, or at least seemed less caricatured. He wrote in a letter to Nancy Mitford included in the back matter that Brideshead Revisited is "steeped in theology" and suggested to his publisher that if they didn't like the original title an alternative might be "A Household of Faith." The subtitle is "The Sacred and Profane Memoirs of Captain Charles Ryder."For all of that the Flytes' religion as depicted in the book seemed more the source of needless tragedy than strength for each of them, driving them to lives hopeless and loveless. It could be that given I'm tone deaf on spiritual subjects--I do try to understand what is so important in so many lives but I admit it's pretty lost on me--that this just isn't a theme that could resonate with me. That may be why the ending fell flat with me and felt so unsatisfying. Nor did I find it the moving experience that my friend who recommended it to me did. I don't know I can say I much identified or sympathized with any of the characters, who seemed the cause of their own destruction despite all their privileges and gifts. They lived in a very rarefied atmosphere indeed of tea and crumpets, fox-hunting, old piles with private chapels, footmen, valets, nannies and chauffeurs. Sebastian, who charms almost everyone, from almost all the characters in the book to many readers, left me rather cold. The narrator, an indifferent parent and husband, left me colder. He laments a dying world where "wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity." The kind of aristocratic wealth and power a tiny few were born to, but almost no one could or did earn, so again I think the nostalgia for that lost world was something for which I felt a decided lack. Yet note I rated this novel fairly highly. It did have the rather voyeuristic thrill of a Downton Abbey world, at times deliciously gossipy and eccentric, almost satiric (especially in the first part), and there is the almost Victorian gleam of Waugh's prose, wit, and rather biting social commentary. I did read it with pleasure and it sped past while I was transported to another world.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MTedesco
I read this book three times so far. The characters are so fascinating, the underlying questions so subtle, and the prose so beautiful, than echoes of its passages resonate in my life. I just watched the mini-series again and was pleased that it remains fairly faithful to the text. It is a book
Show More
that doesn't age, since it deals with that core of human questions and needs that do not fade. Excellent read Show Less
LibraryThing member nigeyb
An absorbing and sumptuous eulogy for the end of the golden age of the British aristocracy. Beautifully written and with so much to enjoy: faith and - in particular - Catholicism, duty, love, desire, grandeur, decay, memory, and tragedy. At its heart there is a beautiful and enchanting story. The
Show More
various characters, right down to the most minor ones, are stunningly and credibly drawn - having just finished the book I feel that I have been amongst them and known them. I have read most of Evelyn Waugh's novels and this is his finest. If you haven't read it yet I envy you. Show Less
LibraryThing member Othemts
The William & Mary Boston Alumni Chapter selected the Evelyn Waugh classic Brideshead Revisited (1945) for our May meeting. The novel is the reflections of Charles Ryder upon his relationship with the aristocratic Marchmain family after coming upon their crumbling homestead Brideshead while serving
In the first section Ryder flashes back to forming a friendship with the younger son Sebastian Flyte while they both studied at Oxford (I use "studied" loosely here as they spend much of their time partying). Sebastian has two characteristics that stand out: one he is Catholic, and two he is barking mad (or batshit insane as we'd say here in the States). A third characteristic emerges over the course of the novel. Sebastian is a depressive alcoholic and Charles is his codependent enabler.
The second part of the novel is much less interesting as Sebastian, the novel's most interesting character, is only discussed second hand. Here Charles returns from traveling abroad for his art, indifferent to his wife and children and instead strikes up an affair with Sebastian's sister Julia. This leads to the climax of the novel in which deus ex machina leads Julia to remember she's a practicing Catholic and calls off the affair and plans for divorce.
From what I understand about Waugh, he was a convert to Catholicism and wrote this as a Catholic allegory. Yet the Catholics in this novel are portrayed as lazy, selfish, drunken, and foolish. That the novel is told from the point of view of the unsympathetic agnostic doesn't bode well for a positive image of Catholicism either. One of my book club friends felt the Catholic message of this novel is that "God will get you in the end." That may be. As a critique of England's crumbling aristocracy, the novel's other theme, this book works much better. But overall I'm none too impressed.
Show More
in the military in wartime England.In the first section Ryder flashes back to forming a friendship with the younger son Sebastian Flyte while they both studied at Oxford (I use "studied" loosely here as they spend much of their time partying). Sebastian has two characteristics that stand out: one he is Catholic, and two he is barking mad (or batshit insane as we'd say here in the States). A third characteristic emerges over the course of the novel. Sebastian is a depressive alcoholic and Charles is his codependent enabler.
The second part of the novel is much less interesting as Sebastian, the novel's most interesting character, is only discussed second hand. Here Charles returns from traveling abroad for his art, indifferent to his wife and children and instead strikes up an affair with Sebastian's sister Julia. This leads to the climax of the novel in which deus ex machina leads Julia to remember she's a practicing Catholic and calls off the affair and plans for divorce.
From what I understand about Waugh, he was a convert to Catholicism and wrote this as a Catholic allegory. Yet the Catholics in this novel are portrayed as lazy, selfish, drunken, and foolish. That the novel is told from the point of view of the unsympathetic agnostic doesn't bode well for a positive image of Catholicism either. One of my book club friends felt the Catholic message of this novel is that "God will get you in the end." That may be. As a critique of England's crumbling aristocracy, the novel's other theme, this book works much better. But overall I'm none too impressed.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Helenliz
This is a beautiful book. In the edition I read, there was an introduction by Waugh that explained how and when he came to write this. It was written just prior to the Normandy invasion in '44, such that the cause of the evident nostalgia for a more peaceful, predictable time can well be imagined.
At the start, we join Charles Ryder as the troops under his command arrive at a new location, it turns out to be a country house, and the name sparks a recollection of his personal connection with the house and the family. Charles first meets the Flytes when he meets Sebastian while they are at Oxford together. He is the epitome of the elite, and Charles is soon under the spell of his charm. As early as the first visit to Brideshead, it is clear that all is not well in the family Flyte. There are oddities all over; the vanished father, the controlling mother, the hearty elder brother, the ethereal sister, the religion, the estate, the ritual for the sake of it. Charles is aware of how different it is, but cannot help but be entranced by it - and through him, we are equally drawn into their spell.
The story advances slowly at first, but always through Charles' interactions with the family Flyte. There are long passages of time when he does not detail events, as it does not relate to the Flytes. His marriage, his career, his children are all dismissed in relatively few lines, as they are not relevant to the family. He becomes further and further entwined in their web, yet always remains the outsider. They seem to want to invite him in, yet it has to be on their terms, the outsiders in the story are not well tolerated. Even when he does accept their terms, it is not for long and he is soon the outsider again, forever looking in longingly, like the child with their nose pressed up against the sweetshop window. They stand alone, somehow, they seem distant, both from Charles and from us, but they worm their way in and you want to know what happened - but fear it does not end well. Told in retrospect, it is a love song to an age that must have seemed to be long past at the time of writing; can you imagine any greater contrast between the impending invasion of Normandy and the glorious 20s at Oxford? It is seductive, lyrical, rose tinged and has an undertone of melancholy. Beautiful read.
Show More
The introduction also said that, in retrospect he thought some of this was overly nostalgic and emotional, but that he decided not to re-write it later. At the start, we join Charles Ryder as the troops under his command arrive at a new location, it turns out to be a country house, and the name sparks a recollection of his personal connection with the house and the family. Charles first meets the Flytes when he meets Sebastian while they are at Oxford together. He is the epitome of the elite, and Charles is soon under the spell of his charm. As early as the first visit to Brideshead, it is clear that all is not well in the family Flyte. There are oddities all over; the vanished father, the controlling mother, the hearty elder brother, the ethereal sister, the religion, the estate, the ritual for the sake of it. Charles is aware of how different it is, but cannot help but be entranced by it - and through him, we are equally drawn into their spell.
The story advances slowly at first, but always through Charles' interactions with the family Flyte. There are long passages of time when he does not detail events, as it does not relate to the Flytes. His marriage, his career, his children are all dismissed in relatively few lines, as they are not relevant to the family. He becomes further and further entwined in their web, yet always remains the outsider. They seem to want to invite him in, yet it has to be on their terms, the outsiders in the story are not well tolerated. Even when he does accept their terms, it is not for long and he is soon the outsider again, forever looking in longingly, like the child with their nose pressed up against the sweetshop window. They stand alone, somehow, they seem distant, both from Charles and from us, but they worm their way in and you want to know what happened - but fear it does not end well. Told in retrospect, it is a love song to an age that must have seemed to be long past at the time of writing; can you imagine any greater contrast between the impending invasion of Normandy and the glorious 20s at Oxford? It is seductive, lyrical, rose tinged and has an undertone of melancholy. Beautiful read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member PilgrimJess
The story is set in the 1920's when two boys, Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, become friends at University in Oxford. When Charles is invited to stay with Sebastain's family for the holidays he finds himself embroiled in that families tribulations not just in the present but the future also with
Now I initially believed that it was going to be one about homosexual desires and perhaps unrequitted love, and there are certainly some subtle unsaid elements of this, it soon became clear that there was more to it than that. I mean Sebastian becomes a lush and virtually disappears out of the story altogether. Then Charles has an affair with Sebastain's sister Julia culminating with both of them getting divorced from their respective spouses and all the time Charles is being drawn ever deeper into the family's religious strife, for Sebastian's family are staunchly Catholic whilst Charles in agnostic. The story becomes about how he will never be truly accepted into Sebastian's and Julia's family circle because of these religious differances.
Unfortunately this is where the book rather lost me. I enjoyed the early part of the book about the drunken antics of young University students and in particularily loved the highly amusing oneupmanship between Charles and his own father but then the final third chiefly centres on the values of marriage, morals and sins within Catholic families, Lord Marchmain's long illness and eventual death feels more of a Catholic wishlist rather than anything else. Whilst I could see how the author had no doubt struggled with his own spirituality I came to not really care about anything that happened to any of the Flytes, probably because I share Charles's view of religion.
That said I enjoyed Waugh's writing style, in particular the comedic elements, and found it interesting that just as Charles star seemed to shine brightly as a painter the Flytes' own seemed to be on the wane with mirroring how 'new' money was replacing 'old' in Britain during the in-between Wars years.
Overall, a good read but one that failed to really grip me.
Show More
profound ramifications for both. Now I initially believed that it was going to be one about homosexual desires and perhaps unrequitted love, and there are certainly some subtle unsaid elements of this, it soon became clear that there was more to it than that. I mean Sebastian becomes a lush and virtually disappears out of the story altogether. Then Charles has an affair with Sebastain's sister Julia culminating with both of them getting divorced from their respective spouses and all the time Charles is being drawn ever deeper into the family's religious strife, for Sebastian's family are staunchly Catholic whilst Charles in agnostic. The story becomes about how he will never be truly accepted into Sebastian's and Julia's family circle because of these religious differances.
Unfortunately this is where the book rather lost me. I enjoyed the early part of the book about the drunken antics of young University students and in particularily loved the highly amusing oneupmanship between Charles and his own father but then the final third chiefly centres on the values of marriage, morals and sins within Catholic families, Lord Marchmain's long illness and eventual death feels more of a Catholic wishlist rather than anything else. Whilst I could see how the author had no doubt struggled with his own spirituality I came to not really care about anything that happened to any of the Flytes, probably because I share Charles's view of religion.
That said I enjoyed Waugh's writing style, in particular the comedic elements, and found it interesting that just as Charles star seemed to shine brightly as a painter the Flytes' own seemed to be on the wane with mirroring how 'new' money was replacing 'old' in Britain during the in-between Wars years.
Overall, a good read but one that failed to really grip me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lmichet
Simply the most gorgeous thing I have read in a very, very long time.
There were a few passages that managed to stun me. The writing on the whole is better than practically anything else in English, yes. I remember at one point stumbling across a passage so gorgeous that I paused to think for a
Reasons for not reading this book are small and silly ones, and I'm sorry I'd listened to them for so long.
There were a few passages that managed to stun me. The writing on the whole is better than practically anything else in English, yes. I remember at one point stumbling across a passage so gorgeous that I paused to think for a
Show More
moment, before suddenly realizing that the passage had all been one sentence, and such a perfect one that I hadn't noticed it. I'm also convinced that this book has the most beautiful writing on the subject of happiness of any book in modern Literature.Reasons for not reading this book are small and silly ones, and I'm sorry I'd listened to them for so long.
Show Less
LibraryThing member WinterFox
I started on this book because I'd read too many times that this was an influence on another book that I'd read and enjoyed. A month or two back, I read an interview with Lev Grossman where he claimed that a lot of the Magicians and its follow-up are taken pretty heavily off of Brideshead
Well. As if I was going to stand for any more of that.
So this book is a classic, and I often have reservations about those, but perhaps what I'm finding as I grow a bit older is that a lot of these are good, particularly if you come to them yourself. Definitely something to keep in mind for the future. This one, plot-wise, is about the reminiscences of one Charles Ryder, student turned painter turned army officer, as he returns to the Brideshead manor during World War II, and looks back on the time he spent there, and the various members of the resident Flyte family he interacted with, chiefly Sebastian, a close friend from his time at Oxford, and his older sister Julia, along with various connected people and hangers-on.
Before getting to any of the themes, here's what really has to be said: this is a masterpiece of writing, just a superbly crafted work, and in many ways, the sort of writing I like best. I recall reading somewhere that Waugh had been asked why he doesn't go into character's thoughts much in writing, and he said something to the effect of, because I know what they say and do, but I don't know what they're thinking. That's the approach to writing I like best, and beyond Charles's thoughts and narration - after all, it's his memories we're reading, of course we know what he thought - everyone else you just get from the outside.
That's really not a big deal, though, when you can write character action and speech as well as Waugh can. A character discoursing can go on for pages and pages; outrageous aesthete Anthony Blanche gets one, ambitious, hard-driving politician Rex Mottram gets another. Just in reading them, even without the carefully observed actions the characters show, you get a sense of who they are, deeply and vividly. There are so many good characters, I don't even want to go into them all, but the whole Marchmain family, and in fact basically all the characters Charles deals with for more than a few lines, really come across as real. And for the ones you spend more time with, like Sebastian or Julia, these are great portraits, of people that you really feel you could know, or have met. This is perhaps the most so for Sebastian; I feel like I have met people like him before, lost and wanting control and full of excess and quirky almost for the sake of it. I don't know you can spend too much time in ex-pat circles without meeting people like him.
But the feel and the change of the relationships are just amazing, and naturally, then, the scope of the story and the life described are pretty big. These are privileged folks, and they're getting out there; Charles gets into painting because, well, there are a lot of rooms in the Flyte home, and why not put some paintings on them? He travels because he can, and because his widower father certainly doesn't want him around, even if he'd never say it quite that way. Pretty much all the characters travel around, really.
And here's where I have to address the themes of this book. For something that's so well-crafted and well-realized, and just flat-out enjoyable to read, even when matters turn dire and melancholic... my, but do I not agree with the underlying nature of the book. These people are privileged in that sense of the word, too, and there's a longing to be on the rich side of the struggle, that some people really do get more chances than others, that there's a merit to this aristrocratic life, and that merrily beating down the working man is fine in here, even if it's not always in so many words. And that's without getting into religion; divinity, grace and Catholicism are huge themes here, with each of the characters in the Flyte family coming to different accommodations with it, and largely none of them being happy. Even the ones that try to reject the religion can't escape it, really; it's always there, in their makeup, and they don't always come to good ends for it, either singly or in their relationships with others. Waugh realizes all this, and I suppose his point is that life is probably miserable on some level either way, so why not have something of the divine in their to help... which, okay, but it doesn't make me happy with that side of the lesson, either. I also suppose I don't really like the "if you're not Catholic, you just don't Get It" side of the argument, because I'd like to think I get it enough... but maybe I don't.
That's perhaps the thing about great works; I don't want to reject the points because I think they're wrong from my experience, even if I don't want to really internalize the lessons, either. Some of that, I think would make me a worse person. But this is a tremendously well done work, and I won't be fooled again, that's for sure. Even if you're not generally into Great Works of Fiction, as the category may be described, this one really is worth a try. It's not flawless, but the flaws are there for a reason, and that's good enough for me.
Show More
Revisited, and that he and other authors could get away with this because the audience by and large hadn't read the original work.Well. As if I was going to stand for any more of that.
So this book is a classic, and I often have reservations about those, but perhaps what I'm finding as I grow a bit older is that a lot of these are good, particularly if you come to them yourself. Definitely something to keep in mind for the future. This one, plot-wise, is about the reminiscences of one Charles Ryder, student turned painter turned army officer, as he returns to the Brideshead manor during World War II, and looks back on the time he spent there, and the various members of the resident Flyte family he interacted with, chiefly Sebastian, a close friend from his time at Oxford, and his older sister Julia, along with various connected people and hangers-on.
Before getting to any of the themes, here's what really has to be said: this is a masterpiece of writing, just a superbly crafted work, and in many ways, the sort of writing I like best. I recall reading somewhere that Waugh had been asked why he doesn't go into character's thoughts much in writing, and he said something to the effect of, because I know what they say and do, but I don't know what they're thinking. That's the approach to writing I like best, and beyond Charles's thoughts and narration - after all, it's his memories we're reading, of course we know what he thought - everyone else you just get from the outside.
That's really not a big deal, though, when you can write character action and speech as well as Waugh can. A character discoursing can go on for pages and pages; outrageous aesthete Anthony Blanche gets one, ambitious, hard-driving politician Rex Mottram gets another. Just in reading them, even without the carefully observed actions the characters show, you get a sense of who they are, deeply and vividly. There are so many good characters, I don't even want to go into them all, but the whole Marchmain family, and in fact basically all the characters Charles deals with for more than a few lines, really come across as real. And for the ones you spend more time with, like Sebastian or Julia, these are great portraits, of people that you really feel you could know, or have met. This is perhaps the most so for Sebastian; I feel like I have met people like him before, lost and wanting control and full of excess and quirky almost for the sake of it. I don't know you can spend too much time in ex-pat circles without meeting people like him.
But the feel and the change of the relationships are just amazing, and naturally, then, the scope of the story and the life described are pretty big. These are privileged folks, and they're getting out there; Charles gets into painting because, well, there are a lot of rooms in the Flyte home, and why not put some paintings on them? He travels because he can, and because his widower father certainly doesn't want him around, even if he'd never say it quite that way. Pretty much all the characters travel around, really.
And here's where I have to address the themes of this book. For something that's so well-crafted and well-realized, and just flat-out enjoyable to read, even when matters turn dire and melancholic... my, but do I not agree with the underlying nature of the book. These people are privileged in that sense of the word, too, and there's a longing to be on the rich side of the struggle, that some people really do get more chances than others, that there's a merit to this aristrocratic life, and that merrily beating down the working man is fine in here, even if it's not always in so many words. And that's without getting into religion; divinity, grace and Catholicism are huge themes here, with each of the characters in the Flyte family coming to different accommodations with it, and largely none of them being happy. Even the ones that try to reject the religion can't escape it, really; it's always there, in their makeup, and they don't always come to good ends for it, either singly or in their relationships with others. Waugh realizes all this, and I suppose his point is that life is probably miserable on some level either way, so why not have something of the divine in their to help... which, okay, but it doesn't make me happy with that side of the lesson, either. I also suppose I don't really like the "if you're not Catholic, you just don't Get It" side of the argument, because I'd like to think I get it enough... but maybe I don't.
That's perhaps the thing about great works; I don't want to reject the points because I think they're wrong from my experience, even if I don't want to really internalize the lessons, either. Some of that, I think would make me a worse person. But this is a tremendously well done work, and I won't be fooled again, that's for sure. Even if you're not generally into Great Works of Fiction, as the category may be described, this one really is worth a try. It's not flawless, but the flaws are there for a reason, and that's good enough for me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member StoutHearted
The novel sweeps from pastoral to rather grim, though Waugh intended it to be a defence of Catholic spiritualism. Using the atheist Charles Ryder to observe and be charmed by the Flyte family, we see the religion's visceral hold upon its members, leading the reader to be conflicted on whether this
Much about the writing is like the Flyte family: reserved with guilty bursts of passion. The dialogue has the clipped, succinct expression particular to English aristoracy. Charles himself is rather cruel in his character and expression, especially towards things he does not understand or respect. He is a most unsympathetic narrator (especially in his adult years when he leaves his family for two years to paint abroad and isn't interested in seeing his children, including one who was born while he was away.) His cruelty only serves to highlight the delicate charm of the Flytes, who even when they defend Catholicism do it in a soft, yet matter-of-fact way that speaks of it as a natural part of their lives, as if its loss from their lives would be akin to the loss of the blood that flows through their veins. In the end, all the errant Flytes come back to religion, in their own way, in order to make things right or establish balance. Charles, however, is left with only nostalgia and perhaps a bit of bitter regret. We are left in teh throws of World War II, in the dilapidated shadow of Brideshead's former glory, to determine for ourselves who is better off in the end.
Show More
is a positive or negative thing. Charles comes to an understanding about the importance of spirituality -- for the Flytes, not himself -- but his mourning is more for the loss of his youth and the carefree days when he frolicked with Sebastian on the luxurious grounds of Brideshead. Though warned by a contemporary at University against falling for the Flytes, he easily falls in with them as one of their own. First, by establishing an intimacy with the eccentric yet fragile Sebastian. Then, gaining the confidence of his mother, Lady Marchmain. Finally, falling in love with Julia, described as a female version of Sebastian. The other characters -- devout siblings Bridey and cordelia, and their adulterous father Lord Marchmain -- all accept him despite differences in class and religion. Much about the writing is like the Flyte family: reserved with guilty bursts of passion. The dialogue has the clipped, succinct expression particular to English aristoracy. Charles himself is rather cruel in his character and expression, especially towards things he does not understand or respect. He is a most unsympathetic narrator (especially in his adult years when he leaves his family for two years to paint abroad and isn't interested in seeing his children, including one who was born while he was away.) His cruelty only serves to highlight the delicate charm of the Flytes, who even when they defend Catholicism do it in a soft, yet matter-of-fact way that speaks of it as a natural part of their lives, as if its loss from their lives would be akin to the loss of the blood that flows through their veins. In the end, all the errant Flytes come back to religion, in their own way, in order to make things right or establish balance. Charles, however, is left with only nostalgia and perhaps a bit of bitter regret. We are left in teh throws of World War II, in the dilapidated shadow of Brideshead's former glory, to determine for ourselves who is better off in the end.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Pepys
I'm not sure I can say I liked this book very much. It's so full of sorrow and sadness that I found the book rather depressing and nauseating. (Er, I feel I'm a bit excessive with the second adjective.) I can't remember of a single event where I could imagine characters smiling, except perhaps at
From what I say, one could think that this book should best be avoided if one has a penchant for commiting suicide. But it's not so simple: I found it difficult to rate. My 3 stars normally mean that I recommend the book. I couldn't go lower, because I felt that, even if I didn't like the story, the style and the atmosphere of decadence are worth reading it after all.
Really uneasy to judge and to review...
Show More
the beginning, the first time Charles visits Brideshead and they eat cherries in the grass by the roadside. Also, there are very long monologues which cover several pages and which one would like to make much shorter.From what I say, one could think that this book should best be avoided if one has a penchant for commiting suicide. But it's not so simple: I found it difficult to rate. My 3 stars normally mean that I recommend the book. I couldn't go lower, because I felt that, even if I didn't like the story, the style and the atmosphere of decadence are worth reading it after all.
Really uneasy to judge and to review...
Show Less
LibraryThing member Kristelh
A novel about Charles Ryder and his interaction with the family of Brideshead. It was published in 1945 and it addressed the sacred and profane. Grace is examined through the Roman Catholic family, Marchmain. It was revised by the author in 1959. I believe I read the revised version. I listened to
Show More
an audio version read by Jeremy Irons who did a splendid job with the various voices. Charles befriends Sebastian. This friendship is one of love. Later Charles attraction to Julia is because she reminds him so much of Sebastian. It is never fully disclosed to be a sexual relationship but it could have been. Charles marries and later divorces. He married for what his wife could do socially for him and not for love. He divorced and was to marry Julia but that never works out and the story ends with Charles alone and childless. The setting is during WWII. The title comes from Charles coming to Brideshead as the military takes it over for a camp and then he recalls his interactions with the family and this home and it ends with Charles in the military trying to get the camp set up. Show Less
LibraryThing member Topper
"Brideshead Revisited" is told as the reminiscence of Captain Charles Ryder, who while barracking in Brideshead Castle during WWII, recalls the people and life he knew there before the war. Ryder (think "Rider")--an indifferent soldier--presents himself as an equally unremarkable student at Oxford,
Waugh's prose is first-rate: many turns of phrases and descriptions shine like jewels, and many passages contain the pregnancy of a Henry James novel, ripe near to bursting with passionate implication. But while Waugh's characters are well-drawn in the moment, his open-handed stylistic trick of substituting the passage of time for their development doesn't always work. As a result, Ryder's character (for example) shifts from a heavy-drinking freshman to a mature artist to a socialite to a jerk to a bored soldier without any trouble on the part of the author. This trick would have been appropriate if it had been isolated and if Ryder were not central to the novel. But similar shifts happen to most of the other characters, all of whom are conveniently absent from the narratives for sufficient periods of time for them to change. In fact, the characters shift so completely and so quickly that the reader (or at least I) barely have a chance to develop much sympathy for them, which is doubly difficult as almost none of them has at any time any true regard for anyone but himself. It's almost as if one crossed Wharton's "House of Mirth" with "The Catcher in the Rye." At one point, Sebastian's sister Julia Flyte makes the remark that New Yorkers appear to confuse energy with neurosis--but if one substitutes "energy" with "sophistication," the same could be said for this entire cast of characters.
I suppose that this is all what Waugh must have intended. And such an argument might have been convincing, if he hadn't decided for every character to follow the same facile arc. One could summarize the book as "Acting like an Idiot > Apostasy > Crisis > Spiritual Redemption" and not lose much in the translation. Enjoy the book for Waugh's prose; enjoy it for the lyricism embedded throughout; enjoy it for the funny parts (Ryder's father is a hoot, as is Anthony Blanche); enjoy it for the insight into a vanishing world of post-WWI aristocracy. But the shallowness is endemic.
Show More
where he meets Sebastian Flyte ("Flight"), whose family lives at the manor house. The rest of the novel concerns the marital, social, and religious drama of the Flyte family and Ryder's relationships with them. Waugh's prose is first-rate: many turns of phrases and descriptions shine like jewels, and many passages contain the pregnancy of a Henry James novel, ripe near to bursting with passionate implication. But while Waugh's characters are well-drawn in the moment, his open-handed stylistic trick of substituting the passage of time for their development doesn't always work. As a result, Ryder's character (for example) shifts from a heavy-drinking freshman to a mature artist to a socialite to a jerk to a bored soldier without any trouble on the part of the author. This trick would have been appropriate if it had been isolated and if Ryder were not central to the novel. But similar shifts happen to most of the other characters, all of whom are conveniently absent from the narratives for sufficient periods of time for them to change. In fact, the characters shift so completely and so quickly that the reader (or at least I) barely have a chance to develop much sympathy for them, which is doubly difficult as almost none of them has at any time any true regard for anyone but himself. It's almost as if one crossed Wharton's "House of Mirth" with "The Catcher in the Rye." At one point, Sebastian's sister Julia Flyte makes the remark that New Yorkers appear to confuse energy with neurosis--but if one substitutes "energy" with "sophistication," the same could be said for this entire cast of characters.
I suppose that this is all what Waugh must have intended. And such an argument might have been convincing, if he hadn't decided for every character to follow the same facile arc. One could summarize the book as "Acting like an Idiot > Apostasy > Crisis > Spiritual Redemption" and not lose much in the translation. Enjoy the book for Waugh's prose; enjoy it for the lyricism embedded throughout; enjoy it for the funny parts (Ryder's father is a hoot, as is Anthony Blanche); enjoy it for the insight into a vanishing world of post-WWI aristocracy. But the shallowness is endemic.
Show Less
LibraryThing member iansales
There are many who consider this the finest novel written in English literature. I can’t agree, although it is very good. But I’m not even sure it’s Waugh’s best novel. I thought Sword of Honour better, to be honest. But then, Brideshead Revisited is not a satire, and even Waugh admits he
Show More
over-wrote it in places. Which is not to say the prose is not good, because even over-written Waugh is fucking classy prose, and way more impressive and readable than, say, Chabon, who I also find over-writes. But Brideshead Revisited suffers from an odd structure, which the television series simplified (and I saw the TV series long before I read the novel), and an extended chronology that covers far more time than there are chapters. It opens with Charles Ryder in uniform during WW2 finding himself back at Brideshead, the seat of the Flyte family, old Catholic aristocracy. Back in his university days, Ryder had made friends with Sebastian Flyte, the youngest son. He had become a friend of the family, but fell out with them when they tried to control Sebastian’s drinking with a strategy he felt would make things worse. (It did.) Years later, married and with children, he bumps into Sebastian’s sister, Julia, and begins an affair with her. The two decide to marry once their individual divorces go through, but the estranged father returns to the family seat to die and everything changes. The framing narrative – Ryder in WW2 – provides only a prologue and an epilogue, and the title too, of course – but the way Ryder lives his life throughout the 1920s and 1930s but the narrative only deals with his interactions with the Flyte family… not to mention the faint smell of fawnication over the aristocracy that pervades the novel, and the fascination with Catholicism (which does, to be fair, result in one of the novels’s best comic scenes), makes it all a less likeable read than it should be. That it succeeds is totally down to Waugh’s prose, even if it is more florid than usual (although I read the later edition, in which Waugh toned it down somewhat). Some of the characters are close to caricatures – especially Ryder’s father, Anthony Blanche and Kurt – but Waugh handles his female characters surprisingly well. Brideshead Revisited is a definitely a book worth reading, but if you had to read a single Waugh novel I wouldn’t recommend it as the one to read. Having said that, I now want to watch the TV series all over again. And I’d like to see the 2008 film adaptation too. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1945
Physical description
351 p.; 5 inches
ISBN
0316042994 / 9780316042994