Brideshead Revisited

'Brideshead Revisited', Evelyn Waugh's finest non-satirical novel, is concerned with the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely-connected characters and the decline of the English aristocracy and their stately homes. The novel is a panegyric and a valediction and expresses a yearning for a lost Aracadia and a loathing for the changing world (see Henry Wallace's 'Century of the Common Man' speech). Although there are many passages of buffonery the themes are romantic (homosexual and heterosexual) and eschatological. The novel is firmly ficticious but many characters (and events) are loosely drawn from the authors life - e.g. Lord Sebastian Flyte is based on Alastair Graham and Hugh Lygon, Anthony Blanche is based on Brian Howard and Harold Acton (all contemporaries at Oxford), Rex Mottram is based on Brendan Bracken (a Canadian politician who gave Waugh leave from military duties to write the novel), Mr Samgrass is based on Maurice Bowra, Sebast! ian's teddy bear Aloysius is based on John Betjeman's 'Archie' (although Betjeman carried his around to mock the upper classes), etc. The archtitectural details of Brideshead were supposedly based on Castle Howard in Yorkshire, which Waugh had visited (the 1981 television series was filmed there). The characterization is generally excellent although Lady Julia Flyte has been compared to 'cardboard' and a 'wax mannequin' by two of Waugh's biographers. The novel is set in various luxurious and exotic places including Oxford, Brideshead in Wiltshire, Venice, London, Paris, Morocco, South America, on board a transatlantic liner. 'Brideshead Revisited' should not be taken out of its historical and social context. The novel is written in the baroque style and contains florid passages (see 'The languor of Youth' speech) and many high-flown metaphors. Waugh wrote in this style because of the Basic English written by many of his contemporaries. Because of the bleak period! of writing (1944) the novel is 'infused with a kind of glu! ttony, food and wine, for the splendours of of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language'(see the preface to the revised edition of 1960). In 1944 it would have been impossible to foresee the English aristocracy maintaining their identity to such a degree; the future "cult" of the country house in the United Kingdom would also have appeared inconceivable. I would recommend this novel to all first-time Waugh readers and to people interested in the subject and period (1920s-WW2).

This book was a terrific reading experience. It takes a while to get into it (by that I mean the beginning is much about drinking champagne and gallivanting about Oxford- a bit of fun), but the process is entirely worth the effort. By the time one finishes, it all makes sense. There are also so many things to discuss- I read it for a book club; by the end I found myself underlining nearly every line. The cast of characters compels one to continue reading, as each shares his or her particular quirks and enhances some sense of how people are both worthy and flawed. I'm glad I read it; the themes are tremendous. Waugh may have written this, in part, because of his own experience with a family much like the one in Brideshead. He later commented that he wasn't sure he even liked this book- for the way he wrote it, etc. But the style is so much indicative of the particular upper crust in that period. If he was dismayed or disgusted by it, it must have been for the same reason we find British society both compelling and humorous. This book isn't necessarily satirical- and I don't think it's trying to be. Part of what makes it such an enjoyable read is how close it comes to satire without being it. For, I believe, Waugh was capturing a vein of society that truly behaved this way. Anyone who's spent time in England can probably attest to some of these characters' truthfulness. Though I'm not historian, I believe this book honest- and that is part of what makes it fascinating. There are a lot of "characters" in this world and this book gives you a look into their particular oddities, dynamics, and struggles.

Great novels may speak to universal human concerns, but they do so by means of particulars, and those particulars interlock in different ways with the experience of each different reader. We come to books by different routes in terms of personal background, literary expectations, or cultural climate; it is only reasonable to acknowledge them. For example, I was initially attracted to the book by its resonance with my own Oxbridge days, the seduction of people from older families or greater wealth, and late adolescent confusion about sexuality and religion. More recently, I come to BRIDESHEAD REVISITED after reading a number of earlier Waugh books, together with those of his fellow convert to Catholicism, Graham Greene; this perspective casts a different light on a book that I knew only from the now-iconic BBC serial of 1981. And more recently still, there is stimulus of the new Miramax movie, a magnificent experience whose significant differences from the book nonetheless help to focus on what Waugh was actually doing. Personal, literary, and cultural: let me address these points in the opposite order. I shall try not to give any outright spoilers, but I am writing for people who already know the general outline of the story.

The movie first: splendid acting, fine period detail, and a feast for the eyes -- although Castle Howard in Yorkshire, one of Britain's grandest buildings, is surely at least twice the size of Brideshead. My greatest surprise in reading the book was to discover how many liberties the screenwriters had taken with the dramaturgy of the original. It was not just a matter of removing discursive passages and tightening things up; significant events had been taken out of order and others inserted, with invented dialogue to go with them. In both film and novel, the middle-class narrator Charles Ryder falls under the spell in turn of Lord Sebastian Flyte, his ancestral home Brideshead, and his sister Julia. The movie makes much more of the implied homoeroticism between Charles and Sebastian (which Waugh probably could not have done even if he had wanted to), but it also introduces his awareness of Julia quite early as a counterpoint to this, culminating in an episode in Venice which effectively causes a break with Sebastian. By the time Sebastian and Charles have parted in the book, however, Julia has made only peripheral appearances and has barely entered Charles' radar. Similarly near the end of the movie, the scene where Charles bargains for Julia with her Canadian husband Rex Mottram has no equivalent in the book whatsoever; Waugh simply glides over the transition as though it didn't matter. But then Waugh treats Julia's marriage to Rex as a hole-in-the-corner affair; he is a divorced man whom, as a Catholic, she can marry only in a state of sin. In the movie, by contrast, Rex too is Catholic and a splendid catch; the grand scene of Julia's engagement ball makes a dramatic climax, at which Sebastian disgraces himself by appearing drunk, and Charles is banished from the house.

So did Waugh not have the trick of the big dramatic moment? On the contrary, he could manage this perfectly well, as his other novels show, but here seems to aim at something entirely different. In every case, the adjustments in the movie tend towards a more conventional drama, in terms of social tensions, personality struggles, and the cavalcade of events. Much is made, for example, of Charles' lower social status, but there is nothing of this in the book, whose characters are grace itself. Emma Thompson has a virtuoso grande dame role as Lady Marchmain, the mother of Sebastian and Julia, but the character is the book is altogether gentler; she works through persuasion, not by force of will. Things that happen in the movie like a coup de théâtre, such as Charles coming together with Julia or Lord Marchmain returning home to die, take days or weeks in the novel. The movie is in the moment but earthbound, while Waugh has another dimension. His rhetoric is not that of a Hollywood actor; he is trying to represent the still small voice of God.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED (1944) is an often funny book, with satires of upper-class twits, sanctimonious hypocrites, and posing aesthetes, but it is rooted nonetheless in a basic sense of civility. Waugh's earlier books, such as PUT OUT MORE FLAGS (1942), were more obviously satirical and not so rooted, but you can see the author struggling to give them moral ballast. This occurs most obviously in A HANDFUL OF DUST (1934) where, in an attempt to resolve the frivolous immoralities of the novel, the author tacks on an ending that belongs to a different world altogether. Here, although the religious themes are introduced as a matter more of biography than belief, they are nonetheless pervasive. Compare Waugh to Graham Greene, who converted to Catholicism four years before him. Greene's fascination with sinful characters who nonetheless find salvation, as in BRIGHTON ROCK (1938) or THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1940), is an assertive statement of a doctrinal paradox; Waugh is more subtle. Indeed, it would be possible to come away from the movie believing that it was an anti-Catholic tract. And yet in the book, Lord Marchmain, Julia, and especially Sebastian in his later years as movingly described by his younger sister Cordelia, emerge as just such prodigals returned to the fold. Even the agnostic Charles appears at the end to be at least half-way towards conversion. Brilliant though the movie's final scene in the chapel was, the ending of the book goes deeper.

So what are those universal themes I mentioned? You don't need to have been at Oxford to respond to such a fine description of the springtime struggle to define one's place in society, one's sexuality, one's talents. You don't need to have lived through a war to lament the passage of time and feel the need to honor the past even when hailing the future. You don't need to come from a noble family to recognize the importance of roots, something essential that comes through no matter what; dysfunctional though the Brideshead family may be, it is no accident that Charles is presented as being virtually without a functioning father at all, deprived of the very roots that make them who they are. And you do not need to be Catholic or even Christian to seek some guiding principle in life, or find a means of living without one.

There are several really good reviews of this book including those by Gary F. Taylor and Mary Whipple, so I'll just comment on the book as a Catholic conversion story. It has been said that "Brideshead Revisited" reflects in some sense Waugh's own conversion to Catholicism. If that is why you are interested in this book, know that it is a subtle story. On the surface Waugh paints a picture of Catholicism through the Marchmain family that is not very attractive. The Marchmain family is rather split between those who remain devout Catholics and those who are rebelling against it, and for the most part those who are rebelling are painted in the more positive light. That is rather oversimplifying it a bit because the characters are not one dimensional stereotypes. Still, it gives you a general sense of the family dynamics and the surface portrait of Catholicism, and this remains the general tone throughout the book. Don't expect some dramatic conversion to suddenly paint Catholicism as all perfect and rosy and right. It's not to be found. Yet Waugh still manages to somehow give one a sense of the power and importance of faith and grace in each of his character's lives. It is not the same for every character, and it is not a neat tidy package for any of them, yet it seems always to be there. For me, this quote from the book sums it up best:

"'I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.'"

This is a memorable book and well worth reading.

This brief review has two purposes. First, to encourage readers to buy the cloth-bound edition, which fits easily into the hand, has much cleaner printing than the paperback, and contains an excellent introduction by Sir Frank Kermode together with a helpful chronology, which puts Waugh into the context of contemporary writings and events. It is well worth the extra two dollars.

My second purpose is to alert readers coming to the book after seeing the recent Miramax movie, that the two are likely to be quite different experiences. The film is magnificently set, splendidly acted, and passionately dramatic; it has all the Hollywood virtues. But it almost misses the fact that Waugh's purpose was as much spiritual as secular: to demonstrate, as he put it, "the operation of divine grace upon a group of diverse but closely connected characters." You could come away from the movie thinking it was an anti-Catholic tract -- but Waugh's novel, despite its characteristic comedy, is also a profound religious statement. I develop this point in more detail in my review of the cloth-bound edition, but whichever one you buy, I highly recommend this book.

Evelyn Waugh made his name with acidly satirical novels focusing largely on the British upper classes' early twentieth century decline. Brideshead Revisited, ironically probably his most famous work, has similar themes but differs substantially in not being primarily satirical. There is some trademark Waugh wit to be sure, especially for those on the lookout, but this is more conventionally serious and ambitious. Not easy to classify, it is part comedy of manners, part historical fiction, and part romance; there are also quite a few comic and didactic elements and some symbolism. All this strongly suggests that Waugh was going for a masterpiece, and many fans and critics have called it such. It is certainly a commendable novel that deserves the high reputation it still has and is exemplary for characterization, a well-told story, and generally strong writing. The issue of whether it is Waugh's best book is essentially subjective, but it is certainly his broadest and probably his best written in conventional terms. However, it is brought down somewhat by a weak ending that makes the execution less stellar than Waugh's satirical masterworks and also harms his didactic purpose. This does not stop it from being an excellent novel but does keep it from true greatness.

Unlike most Waugh works, Brideshead functions on several levels. Charles Ryder, its first-person narrator, is still young but past his formative experiences; now a World War II British Army Captain, he looks back on the events that brought him to where he is and made him the man he is. Chronologically, there is a definite progression - if not necessarily progress - from relatively carefree, naïve youth to hard-won, belated adult wisdom. The novel can thus be legitimately seen as a bildungsroman - one that, moreover, many British men surely related to, as Ryder had many of his generation's characteristic experiences. This aspect is not strong enough to make Brideshead one of the great bildungsromans, but it is an important part of the book's worth and lasting value.

More important is the Flyte family that is the focus for most of Ryder's important experiences as well as the titular homestead that is metonymically linked to them. Like the Last family in A Handful of Dust, Waugh's most enduring other work, they are a traditional upper-class British family struggling to keep up with modern society and maintain ancestral dignity. It is a tough battle, and history has shown that there were almost no survivors. Ryder comes from a class that is distinctly beneath them but close enough for him to become active in their affairs, and he sees their tragic disintegration as both observer and participant. They stand in for the many families like them, and there is much pathos in their story, which also brings out other emotions. This is all the more so in that, in contrast to Waugh's usual way, he does not poke fun at them. Their fall is portrayed in an unadorned manner, letting us draw our own conclusions about its social and historical meaning.

As this suggests, Brideshead is a very moving and engrossing novel; it might not quite bring tears but draws us in and runs us through an emotional gamut. This is all the more notable in that, as in much of Waugh, no major character is likable. Only Cordelia, the youngest Flyte, and the family's Nanny Hawkins are even remotely so. The rest are vain, selfish, self-pitying, melodramatic, and more - yet, though they are far from conventionally sympathetic, we feel with, if not quite for, them. This is a triumph of Waugh's art, a trick only the best writers can pull off. The Flytes have a tragic flaw - the inherited pride the refuse to abandon -, and it proves to be their destruction in various ways. Objectively speaking, it is easy to say this is deserved, but it would take a hard heart not to have some feeling. There is a sense that they are doomed - if not necessarily victims of venomous fate, at least to a large extent casualties of time and place. Their story is fascinating and emotional enough to make the book worth reading.

However, there is quite a bit more to the novel. A realist triumph, it is a vivid portrait of a distinct era; we get a good idea of how various British groups lived and thought. There is much social observation, especially in regard to class, religion, and art. Brideshead is particularly valuable as a realistic document of pre-WWII British college life; the most surprising thing may be how little has changed. We also get an interesting glimpse of an era when Catholicism was still a great social stigma in England even among the gentry - a topic close to Waugh. Class relations are also variously explored in Ryder's interactions with the Flytes. Ryder's role as painter meanwhile interestingly dramatizes the artist's role in the era and may be meant as far-reaching symbolism again arguably touching the author. Finally, though only briefly, the novel vividly shows WWII's profound effect on all aspects of British life. All of this is engrossing and entertaining; much is moving, some is comic, and quite a bit is thought-provoking.

Brideshead also benefits from one of modern literature's most memorable and moving, if unconventional, depictions of love. Ryder and Julia Flyte are not the most likable characters to ever fall in love but are among the most believably and vividly drawn; much of what they experience will be widely and movingly familiar. As one would expect with Waugh, their relationship is no fairy tale; Brideshead does a superb job of conveying love's constant ups and downs with verisimilitude and emotion.

Ryder's relationship with Julia's brother Sebastian is nearly as interesting in this regard and far more so otherwise. It is a startling example of just how recently intense male friendships could be carried on openly in Western society without homosexuality rumors. The move away from this is of course far more pronounced in America than in Europe, and the novel will certainly be far more of an eye-opener for Americans in this way. To what extent Waugh meant the relationship as homosexual, if at all, is of course debatable, and the seemingly ever-growing Queer Theory movement has few texts more open to explication, but there is much of sociological interest here for all.

The novel could have been truly great, an undeniable masterpiece, if it only had an effective conclusion, but it unfortunately does not. The dubious tradition of having hedonistic and otherwise conventionally immoral characters undergo perfunctory religious conversion at a literary work's end goes back at least to Apuleius' [check]The Golden Ass, and this is unfortunately another entry. Waugh stated that the main theme is God's grace, and those paying any attention can see that it is, though there is no hint until the last few pages. The Flytes' troubled relationship with Catholicism is a theme throughout, and their trauma is the sort of thing that typically drives even the most guarded into desperation and thus religion, but the relative ease with which various members embrace it is simply absurd. The patriarch's deathbed conversion is particularly overwrought; however guilty his conscience, it is highly implausible. Far more significantly, Waugh fails to portray is convincingly. Ryder's anti-religious comments and actions throughout the scene have center stage, and any moderately engaged reader would think sympathy and strength are with him, yet Waugh would have us believe he is on the losing end. One critic aptly remarked that this episode would be one of Waugh's most brilliantly and subtly satirical if it were not meant so seriously - but unfortunately it is. The mercurial Julia's sudden conversion is far more plausible, especially as Waugh takes care to carefully foreshadow, but he should not be offended if many readers cynically question her sincerity and wonder how long her resolution will last. Most ridiculous of all is the conversion of Ryder. A staunch religion opponent throughout the novel lacking even the slightest sign of giving in, his change and newfound optimism, however uneasy, are simply unbelievable. He has had some difficult experiences but nothing to bring such a change. The sudden switch is almost self-parodical, an embarrassing artistic flaw leaving a bad taste in our proverbial mouths.

I would dismiss all this as a cheap narrative trick in a lesser writer, but we must give Waugh the doubt's benefit. It is most likely a simple case of didacticism overcoming art; Waugh has a point to make about how God's mercy operates in seemingly illogical but ultimately beneficial ways but pushes far too hard. This would seem obvious even if we knew nothing about him, but there may be much biographical insight. Waugh converted to Catholicism not long before writing Brideshead and had a somewhat uneasy relationship with it for the rest of his life; most who have looked into it believe he was sincere even if hardly a model Christian. His desire to portray this in his work is very understandable, perhaps even inevitable, but many critics think that, like nearly all authors in similar situations, he let beliefs reduce artistry. Balancing them is extremely difficult and certainly not limited to religion; that Waugh could not is unfortunate but hardly surprising. This was the first real instance, but it is generally thought to infect his later writings to varying degrees. However, the ending thankfully does not ruin what is otherwise an excellent work, even if it does frustratingly hold off greatness.

A few minor, additional warnings may be needed. Waugh is in my view one of modern fiction's great stylists, his conciseness, straight-forwardness, relative lack of allusion, and general avoidance of Modernist techniques making him stand out in an era when literature became ever less accessible. He may lean toward overly simple for some, but he has the great virtue of clearness that I value highly and that is so sorely lacking in much post-nineteenth century literature. That said, what was concise and clear sixty-plus years ago is not exactly so now. Waugh is formal and, in contrast to much subsequent fiction, especially the popular kind, somewhat stiff. He was not really pretentious but can easily come off as such to those not prepared to take him on his own terms. He was also uber-British, and Brideshead is particularly so; the country's culture and history infuse every aspect of the novel. This is of course not a bad thing, but those unfamiliar with British culture and literature - or who are averse to it - may be somewhat averse to the novel. My advice to them and all others not immediately taken with the novel is to stick with it. The ending is certainly a letdown, but Brideshead as a whole is one of the best post-nineteenth century English novels and should be read by anyone even remotely interested in literature of its various types.

Other reviewers have commented on the elements of the plot so I won't do so here.

What a great cast of characters! Each profoundly deep and profoundly real. In modern literature and pop cultural depictions, religious characters are usually one dimensional and lack empathy. It's either the 'spiritual' character who is tolerant and affirming of all or the more commonly represented by a close-minded, dogmatic individual. The depictions in Brideshead Revisited are deeper and nuanced. I would say that this book is almost a case study in Cognitive Dissonance - a concept not dwelt on nearly enough by most people. Despite their foibles and sins, the religious characters of the book maintain some semblance of faith and some desire for righteousness. We live in a time where Hypocrisy is the greatest of sins; the prescription being if you can't act out what you believe, change your beliefs. This book puts forward just the opposite solution (though the book is not preachy in the least) - maintain the faith and keep on keeping on.

I think the preface to this, written by Waugh, is invaluable. I too saw the 1981 Irons interpretation of Brideshead revisited. I tried to watch it again recently but it was very slow moving. When I saw this on the shelf at the library, I picked it up because Handful of Dust was a great book about colonialism. I was very surprised when I read in the preface that Waugh wrote this in 3 months! That's amazing! I disagree with many of the reviewers here in that I don't think Waugh was an amazing prose writer, but he did have a very interesting talent. His dialogue manages to capture things said and unsaid. The part where Ryder and Julia are in the boat are magical. Almost all of the religious discussions deal with such magificently huge issues but in an almost quick, offhand manner. He mentions that he toned down the excesses of food and opulence because he had written it in such a time of rationing and greyness. Just fascinating bit of historical fiction, and the interplay between the characters is great. I'm not sure I ever caught the charm of Sebastian, and being Catholic myself much of it was overwrought. I really recommend to anyone who picks up the Everyman version, check out the Preface. He writes that he didn't know at the time that Country Houses would be saved by the aristocracy, so he was writing with such vivid nostalgia. Anyways, he says it better than I!

By the time that Evelyn Waugh wrote BRIDESHEAD REVISITED in 1945, he had earned the reputation of one who saw a decline and fall of sustaining Upper Class British values, a descent which he exposed through his satire and one in which he could see no forseeable solution. The closing of the Second World War oddly enough filled Waugh with a whiff of hope that there may yet be a Grace that watches over us all: He wrote the book "to trace the workings of the Divine Purpose in a pagan world." Such a shift in metaphysical gears is noteworthy in that in his earlier books, Waugh saw religion only as a cover for hypocricy. Now in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, Waugh continues to depict religion as a cover, but this time, it may obscure that for certain people, religion may have a base that provides ongoing faith, even if they lapse into faithless actions.

The novel opens with Captain Charles Ryder revisiting a mansion that in his youth he had often frequented, Brideshead. Except for the last few pages, the entire novel is a flashback that shows how Ryder enters the lives of the powerful Marchmain family. As Ryder interacts with them, he can see that they are a family in crisis, not the least of which is a failure to maintain a sustaining ethos that Waugh has railed at in all of his previous novels. The patriarch of the clan, Lord Marchmain, early in life found himself in religious confusion; he thought that by converting to Roman Catholicism, he might find inner peace. He did not help his cause by abandoning his wife and family to take a mistress in Italy. His four children, Sebastian, Brideshead, Julia, and Cordelia, have their own issues, many of which revolve upon either a too heavy or a too light emphasis on religion.

At first, Ryder has an idyllic existence in his youth as he becomes intertwined with the Marchmains. His friend Sebastian, is a hopeless alcoholic. Later in the novel's second half, Ryder marries, but begins an affair with Julia, which ends predictably unhappy when Julia refuses to divorce her husband and to marry Ryder because of religious restrictions. There is no one in the novel who is happy with the way that things have turned out.

Critics have tended to focus on the religious implications of the novel. A typical comment is that there are so many religious overtones at all, a surprising development considering the lack of same in Waugh's earlier canon. Further, many readers have confessed confusion as to the purpose of all this religion. Did Waugh intend it to be revered as a sustaining ethos or did he see religion as he did earlier, as yet another symbol of an irrelevant institution fit only for ridicule? The answer is both cryptic and troubling. If the search for values is limited to the sphere of mortality, then there can be no possibility of an ethos to sustain one when circumstances become dire. Waugh implies that it is only when one has faith that there is a realm of faith beyond the earthly walls of Marchmain castle, that life and death may have meaning, however terrible and terrifying that meaning may be.

Everyone is probably familiar with the PBS version of Evelyn Waugh's best known, and quite possibly best written, work. This is the story of Charles Ryder's nostalgic narration of what he experienced years prior to the war....as an officer he finds himself stationed back at the old Marchmain Manor "Brideshead". He recalls his meeting with the tragic Sebastian, Lord and Lady Marchmain and their daughter Julia...whom he wants to marry. Interspersed throughtout the novel is the subject of religion. The Marchmain's had converted to Catholicism while Charles, having no religious upbringing, was Agnostic. The 'Twitch upon a thread' metaphor is played upon as the Marchmains close in on the eternities.

As he closes this chapter of his life, Charles reflects..."Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played: something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame--a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones."

Read this work and get Charles' perspective on this fierce little human tragedy and the rekindling of that old flame lit once again in his life. Love can emerge from suffering. After all the vicissitudes Charles endures, he still finds the flame burning anew in the old Chapel. I guess you could classify this as Charles' epiphany.

Originally published in 1944, and in spite of the military setting of the prologue, this novel has little to do with the World War, but is almost wholly about the estrangement of life among the upper British society as penetratingly portrayed and satirized by the antics of the Flyte and Ryder families during those years that paralleled the historical angst that lead into the Second World War.

One of the very greatest writers of the twentieth century, Waugh is a commanding painter with words: such brilliant, precise, well-planned and placed words, much like a great work by Beethoven, ordered so inevitably that one knows that no other combination could speak clearer or louder or softer - or with more encompassing wit. It is a delight to read - and then re-read, to savor many of its perfect passages. Like: "...their barn-yard daughters will snigger and think their father was quite a dog in his day..."

and: "Charm is the great English blight.... It kills love, it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you."

Even the surnames are characterizations: Ryder - Charles, and even his unruffled father, smug in his mocking schemes, seemed content to just ride along with what the world subjects them to, sheltering an underlying laxness - or even care - with a smile of agreeableness and charm. The Flytes, all six of them, denizens of a countryside castle-like manor named Brideshead, have interesting ways of fleeing reality, acting at times like automatons grasping at or revolting against selected religious catechisms, or choosing the quiet death of a passionate alcoholic. Scenes change from Oxford, London, Venice, the Casbah or boat crossings of the Atlantic, but always, it seems, Brideshead calls. "...for we possess nothing certainly except the past..."

Brideshead Revisited is the culmination of years of masterful writing and perhaps his very best novel: the biting satire and broad-handed humor of A Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall have been honed by experience and refined by humanity, as we come to respect and care for all the book's major characters, while along the way many subjects and ideas are presented on the reader's stage: faith and the role of God's Grace, independence, homosexuality, art, rights and responsibilities, and although a priest plays an important part, the reader will not be inveigled to find a confessional. Waugh gives us "...one of those needle-hooks of experience which catch the attention when larger matters are at stake, and remain in the mind when they are forgotten..."

To paraphrase a Joni Mitchell song, Waugh has looked at love and life from not just both sides now, but countless sides, up and down, and given us the finest illusions to recall.

This is a masterpiece of English literature: this classic cries out for reading!

On August 17, 1939, Waugh wrote in his diary, "I don't want to influence opinions, events, or expose humbug or anything of that kind. I don't want to be of service to anyone or anything. I simply want to do my work as an artist."

Certainly nothing useful can be added to the abundant praise of Waugh's wonderful artistry in creating "Brideshead Revisited", nor in Lindsey-Hogg's skill in bringing the novel faithfully to life on the screen. But we may wonder if Waugh lived up to the intent stated in his diary because "Brideshead Revisited" seems at first acquaintance to be an unabashed effort to present religious faith in a serious positive light without the skepticism so often found in modern fiction. Waugh strives to reach his goal through the delineation of his characters of whom Charles Ryder is masterfully portrayed by Jeremy Irons. We find Charles a rather cold, diffident, unsympathetically remote agnostic, and largely a foil for bringing the other characters to life in illustration of Waugh's chief agendas.

Waugh's biographer, Christopher Sykes who knew Waugh personally, characterized him as something of a snob from middle class origins who looked up to the aristocracy, and looking down on the lower classes did not hesitate to make people feel ill at ease with regard to their origins through a clever form of bullying. We see this depicted by Waugh's reveling in the social gaffes on the voyage, and in the hair-cutting incident with Hooper and Charles contemptuous treatment of him, but curiously in the end Hooper appears to rise cheerfully above such harassments. Does Waugh see Hooper as too stupid and insensitive to know that he has been insulted, or of such inner strength that he makes his assailants look shabby by comparison? Waugh is said to have despised the man he modeled Rex Mottram on, characterizing Mottram as a fraud marrying Julia for advantage. But Mottram also is revealed as a pragmatic success in a society bound by the questionable prohibitions of Catholic doctrine regarding marriage and divorce.

Biographer Sykes, a Roman Catholic himself, wrote that Brideshead Revisited. "is solely addressed to believing Catholics and admirers of the Catholic Church. The general reader is rather left in the cold." This is certainly evident in the story's climax at Marchmain's deathbed scene where Charles first argues vehemently against a priest administering the last rites but suddenly undergoes a totally surprising conversion at the dying man's sign of acceptance. Whether Waugh brings this off successfully or not will depend of what the viewer/reader brings to the scene. Certainly what Waugh has shown us to this point is what misery the strictures of organized religion can impose on the lives of its subjects through guilt and conditioning. Sebastian drowning his remorse for his homosexuality in alcohol; Marchmain's alienation from his wife's obsessive conformity driving him to Paris and a loveless relationship with a mistress; Brideshead's mindless obedience condemning him to collecting matchboxes and a ridiculous marriage; Julia's lapses from doctrine leaving her with a life of endless tormenting guilt summed up in her final remark to Charles as she sacrifices her final chance at happiness, "I am not quite bad enough to set up a rival good to God's". All this and more leaves us with many questions as to what Waugh's intentions actually were as revealed in this masterpiece that is reality rather than fiction.

Evelyn Waugh had two great loves: the English aristocracy (which he wasn't a part of--just their poodle) and his adopted religion, Catholicism. With all the ardor of The Convert, Waugh can find solace and virtue in self-abnegation, self-loathing, self-absorption and self-righteousness. Like so many "catholic" artist's he finds ecstasy as a target for arrows and begrudges Jesus his crown of thorns (that would look SO much better on me!). To know even a little bit about EW's dissipated Oxford days can't help but make one wonder why is it always the debauched who become holier-than-thou.

First, the self-righteous Lady Marchmain. The personification of sanctimonious prig, whom a husband and son Sebastian despise with an all-consuming hatred that sends one into exile and the other into his cups. Second, self-absorption: the rather prurient voyeur, Charles Ryder, who latches himself on to Sebastian and insinuates himself into the Marchmain clan, rather like the author himself, with the Lygon family at Madresfield. He starts as ingenue and becomes a rather jaded, vacuous hack, loyal to his ambition but keenly aware he is second rate. One doesn't object at all to Waugh's ending for him and can't help but wonder how much of himself, Evelyn saw in Charles. Surely the climbing part.

Next, self-loathing. Poor Sebastian Flyte! Allmost certainly homosexual he is crushed by his sexual inclination, Catholicism and a mother who could teach Torquemada a trick or two. Like the martyr of the arrows, this Sebastian is repeatedly pierced but by his own self-disgust. Last, representing self-abnegation is the beautiful sister Julia. Having made a mistake marrying the wrong man and then having strayed, apparently by the lights of Waugh's religion she must, as punishment be eternally miserable. With this view of religion it is little wonder Lord Marchmain bolted and Sebastian finds solace in brandy. They are a chilling charivari, this lot.

One doesn't have to embrace Waugh's punitive Catholicism to admire his writing, though. There is something admirable and very modern about an author who can craft a character like Charles Ryder. He is basically extremely unlikable--the true anti-hero, and perfect chanticleer of aristocratic decline. Charles practically rubs his hand with glee at the prospet of elbowing out the plodding Bridey. But Waugh is too good a writer to look away from the inevitable outcome of the Marchmains, much as he might despair their loss. And one is tempted to lament the end of Lord Marchmain, and a passing era, til we see what a nasty bastard a marquis near death can be. In Lady Marchmain he might well have gotten what he deserved Waugh's depiction of him, and other minor
characters such as Bridey, Anthony Blanche, Charles' father and the dreadful Beryl are little gems and great small achievements in themselves.

Brideshead Revisited has been called Waugh's masterpiece andi think that is so. A lamentation for a rather bad lot of toffs and a hosannah for a religion that provides cold comfort.

After his venomously funny early novels, Evelyn Waugh’s BRIDESHEAD REVISITED was seen as his bid at writing serious, ambitious fiction. It was, pointedly, his Catholic novel—a loaded topic which he treats with cunning and stellar indelicacy. (Of a pious young girl, her brother remarks, “She made a novena for her pig.”) And the sting is certainly still there—the pages in which Anthony Blanche practices conversational vivisection on the Flyte family are some of the best vicious gossip in literature. But the tone and style were a departure, both in its sensuous detailing of luxury and in its voluptuously plaintive mood. The storyline and the prose—of a young middle class artist who gets entangled in the tragedies of an aristocratic Catholic family—were derided by some as snobbish and vulgar, and there’s a good deal of truth in both charges. And BRIDESHEAD doesn’t cohere—I’m never sure that the book ends up meaning what Waugh wanted it to mean. But there’s a livid surcharge of emotion in the book—of the delight of privileged youth, which one can certainly still smell around Oxford, and of the embittering wounds of loss, as friendship, love and the hope of belonging go slowly, gangrenously wrong. And it has a great, surreal cast of characters. As for the theme of property, I cannot pick up BRIDESHEAD without remembering an autumnal walk onto the grounds of Castle Howard in Yorkshire (the model for Brideshead), with its great gates like trumpet voluntaries, the noble dome of its crypt—and getting a harrowing whiff of how the prospect of owning such a property could throw a life out of its proper orbit.

Glenn Shea, from Glenn's Book Notes, at www.bookbarnniantic.com

The first two-thirds of "Brideshead Revisited" is classic Evelyn Waugh, filled with wit and humor, fascinating characters and provocative scenes, and (above all) evocative description and meticulous prose. Waugh continues his tradition of skewering the pretensions and foibles of the aristocracy--although it's true the Oxford scenes are not as over-the-top as in "Decline and Fall" (Frank Kermode's introduction notes Waugh's acknowledgment of the 'mood of sentimental delusion' which pervades the work).

I have the same reservations, however, about the third part of the book as did many of Waugh's contemporaries, including Edmund Wilson and Conor Cruise O'Brien. While the prose never falters and the "plot" is fascinating to the end, the satire is set aside for a moral, and your appreciation of the book may very well depend on whether you agree with its underlying religious message. To be sure, I really admire this book and continue to recommend it to everyone, but a second reading showcased what for me are shortcomings--flaws that make the work seem slightly less aesthetically pleasing than Waugh's earlier comic novels (particularly "Decline and Fall" and "Handful of Dust").

Like, say, Flannery O'Connor or Graham Greene, who present their theology in the complexities of the characters' actions and motives, Waugh famously declared that he intended to show the "operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters." Yet, where O'Connor and Greene use their stories to illustrate the subtleties of grace, Waugh seems to be making a case for it--but there are many passages that more convincingly show the operation of authorial, rather than divine, grace. And when he details conversations and debates on secular values and Catholic faith, Waugh can be a little heavy-handed--bordering on didactic. Throughout the dialogue the deck is loaded to demonstrate, for example, that Charles's milquetoast agnosticism pales in comparison to the richness of Catholicism.

In fact, the problem with fiction as a vehicle for theological principles is that it can never truly show anything like "divine grace"; it's necessarily the author who determines what happens to the characters--and why it happens. While Lady Marchmain declares halfway through the book that "we must make a Catholic of Charles," and while Julia's near-apostasy and Sebastian's alcoholism interfere with their spiritual salvation, it is ultimately Waugh--not God--who decides their various outcomes. (This dilemma is clearest during a deathbed conversion scene, which tell us everything about the author's hopes and "proves" nothing about faith. And this episode is based on a real-life occurrence in which, aside from the presence of God, Waugh himself played a coercive role.)

This is not to say, however, that Waugh portrays his Catholic characters as saints or their actions as exemplary. Indeed, what saves the novel from becoming a catechism is that Charles, Julia, and Sebastian all are deeply flawed, at times disagreeable people. And, not ironically, the character who (in my mind) is the most lively and lifelike of the bunch is the irrepressible and unapologetic Anthony Blanche. In fact, one might even argue that Blanche's scene-stealing charm is "secular grace" working its inexorable way on Waugh himself.

My comments here focus on only one theme--albeit a central one--in the novel. Most of the book, fortunately, is a comic excursion through a lost age and an elegiac ode to lost youth, as well as a thesis on divine grace. In the final analysis, it's impossible to ignore the beauty of the writing or underestimate the ability of this novel to make one ponder one's own secular or religious beliefs.

The dominant impression I got from reading this book was that Evelyn Waugh can write masterfully while giving the impression that doing so is effortless. Once the Oxford foppishness at the start passes, this novel turns into a fascinating study of individuals who are seemingly frozen into their pre-destined roles. The character development is exceptional, the descriptions of the settings are wonderfully detailed, and the story moves at an appropriate pace. This is a truly exceptional piece of work in a genre that usually fails to gain my interest.

"Brideshead Revisited" By Evelyn Waugh

I saw "Brideshead" on PBS years ago, and loved the way it captured the period between the wars when England was still England, gentlemen won its battles on the playing fields of Eton, and matched wits at Oxford. Evelyn Waugh is a treasure; he has the wit of Oscar Wilde and the satiric sense of a Jonathan Swift or an Alexander Pope. Reading "Brideshead" on a warm summer afternoon on the patio is like going back to a younger and more innocent time, like Charles and Sebastian had.

" I HAVE been here before," I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool's-parsly and meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory of God; and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest."

Sebastian's family is utterly dysfunctional: an anachronism dating back to the landed gentry. His father, from whom he estranged but on whom he depends for money, is a bore. His brother is a poseur. The only normal member of the family is the young girl. Sebastian does what any rational young man might do under the circumstances: he drinks to excess.

Charles and Sebastian spend the summer vacations together at Brideshead and on the Continent; reading, painting, exploring the countryside enjoying the languorous enchantment of youth.

Much has been made of the novel's religious context: I prefer to think of it as spiritual...a journey from agnosticism to belief. It is also the story of a chaste and platonic love between two romantic young men. It is no more a gay novel than "Brokeback" was a gay movie: it's about love, in its various and inexplicable permutations... and loss of innocence.
"Brideshead" is a joy to return to year after year.

****

Brideshead Revisited is a beautifully written book about very ugly people. In fact, by the end of the novel I was actually grateful that Hitler was just off-stage, sharpening The Wehrmacht and readying the iron bombs for dropping on all these self-centered, self-indulgent, wearisome British zombies.

Structurally the novel is perfect and if we were ever to wake up one sunny morning mysteriously conferred by God with the gift of being an editor of literature, Brideshead Revisited would be the new War and Peace. Everything from the wonderful framing of the novel with Charles 'revisiting' the estate, to the beautiful language Waugh writes so effortlessly in, to even the subject matter of the ending of the British aristocracy - it's all quite 'perfect'.

Trouble is, (nearly) everyone in the novel is a priggish snob, a bitter, hateful gossip, a languid zombie of pre-war 'British-ness', a dying relic of a hemorrhaging Empire, and all around a collection of nasty specimens exhibiting the worst of privileged humanity. Worse still, the main character, Charles, floats about through life with a detached aire that would make a ghost jealous.

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë managed to write at great length how people can be cruel and nasty and wicked to each other and yet by the end of her masterpiece we loved everyone (even if there was a sense of Stockholm Syndrome to it all). Here, Waugh does not endear the characters to us in any way - we do not care much about them by the end any more than we began the novel with. They change very little.

In Remains Of The Day, Kazuo Ishiguro gave us a similar setting of England on the verge of war with Hitler and an old manor home coming to terms with the new world order. Yet where Ishiguro manages to make a stuffy, detached, brutally professional and dedicated main character (Mr. Stevens) and his master, the naive and member of the old guarde Lord Darlington, Waugh in this novel just shows us how awful these people all are - how out of touch, how insulated they were and how lucky we all are to have had Hitler drop all his bombs on them for half a decade.

Not that showing us the bad side of humanity is a bad thing and I most certainly do not believe art needs to be life-affirming and every novel needs to be populated with a Tolstoy's 'Levin', however, when we have nothing to sympathize with, not even a shred of decency, then we run the risk of not caring anymore what the author's intent was (to show the final decay of British upper-class) and just keep turning the pages because the language is beautiful and hoping someone gets a bomb dropped on their head.

Not that it's all terrible. Sebastian verges on becoming a wonderful character, but he's under utilized and Waugh seems to be counting on the fact that we'll all just be smart enough to see how Sebastian just wants to have fun and not be around miserable people all day long (his family). Yet by the end we have become Sebastian - drunk with Waugh's language and twisted up on the doorstep of a North African monastery in a puddle of our own urine and vomit, the faint flicker of life somewhere in our out-of-focus eyes that lets the monks know we're not quite dead yet and that they should attempt to kindly revive our stupor.

Anyway, Sebastian is written out of the book just past the half-way point and isn't brought up enough again for us to care really what ever may have actually come of him. I think Waugh just forgot to follow the thread of Sebastian being the only likable character in the novel and decided to see how far he could depress the reader.

I might have been able to forgive Waugh a bit more had he been a bit more on-the-nose with his theme of class and 'caste', but he even wrote the modern equivalent of an every-man, Hooper, as a dolt. By the end we just have Charles as a middle manager in the Army, dissatisfied and at the same time almost happy that he, partially, ruined an entire family's life.

Oh, sure, it's not a bad thing that these types of people are no longer around. The fall of this class of British society is no bad thing for humanity and it serves as a reminder to the rest of us 'plebs' how much contempt the upper-classes truly and surely have for us living in the gutter of Rome. We should never forget that there are few noble Levin's and Pierre's in the world because most of the well-to-do are the banks in Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath' or the cheat who tries to blame a crime on a poor prostitute such as in 'Crime in Punishment'. The real world is full of contemptible characters who are glad they 'got theirs' and will make damn sure you don't see any of it and want you to just go away and not muck up the pretty scenery with your dirty, filthy, unwashed, and unclean odors.

And maybe I wanted Waugh to just go all the way - maybe I wanted him to side with the upper classes and not leave us with the final note of gleeful revenge at seeing the end come so painfully to those who deserved it. Maybe if Waugh had been full on conservative and not hinted at the popular liberalness I keep harping on about, then I would have not felt so terrible about all this and could pass it off as a 'Ayn Rand-ian' warning to the well read about how the rich and conservative want to rule the world.

Alas, that's not to be. Waugh leaves us with an unclear image of his true intent, paints an ugly picture with beautiful paint, and manages to just depress the hell out of me.

Finally, for as beautifully written as the novel is, I already feel like I've forgotten most of it. There is such a fleetingness to the whole affair, a lightness to the events of the story that I had a hard time feeling anything that happened was even important. Even the scene on the ship, with its humor, felt empty and shallow.

Maybe what the book lacked, a book that talked so much about religion, lacked a soul. There was no heart in any of it, just indifference, decay, and unimportance in a world that was quickly to become very important with bombs, armies, firebombings - a clearing of the old undergrowth and dead brush.

In the end, not the most interesting subject matter, and at best, the whole thing was not as artful as others have managed to be with somewhat similar subject matter. Go read 'Remains of the Day', 'War and Peace', and 'Wuthering Heights' instead.

This is the first Evelyn Waugh book I have read, on recommendation. 'Brideshead Revisited' is an extremely well-written book that thoroughly tells the story of Charles Ryder, an English officer who is forced to recall the happiest and saddest moments of his life. Through his memories, we learn of the wealthy and eccentric Marchmain family and the formative role they played in the narrator's life.

Charles Ryder begins his memoirs when, as a soldier in WWII, he finds himself requisitioning the old manor home of the Marchmain family. He immediately recalls his first encounters with the family - the mysterious and ultra-stylish Sebastian, whom he encounters while at Oxford, a pretentious young man who carries around a stuffed bear and has a propensity to drink. Sebastian is hesitant to introduce Charles to his family, for fear they will charm him so much that he will lose him as a friend for himself. But Charles does meet, and is charmed by, the Marchmain family, ingratiating himself into every aspect of their life. He quickly becomes a mainstay with the family and is called upon in times of great stress - when Sebastian's propensity to drink gets him expelled and causes him to escape his demons by running away. Despite losing his friend, through the years, Charles remains connected with the Marchmains in varying degrees of intimacy.

'Brideshead Revisited' is a stylish and well-written saga of one man's journey to discover himself; he seeks out what he desires in others, and at the end of his journey is brought to tears by his remembrances of everything he has lost. The novel is not only a family saga, but also raises deep questions of faith, especially pertaining to Catholicism. As an agnostic, Charles ridicules the Marchmain's devout adherence to a faith system he finds mystical; and in the end, he must lose the Marchmain family because he cannot reconcile himself to their system of beliefs. Charles would rather find his own system of beliefs, exactly what he's been searching for throughout the entire novel, seeking it through school, painting, and relationships, but to no avail.

I had a friend who made it a point to read "Brideshead Revisited" once a year without fail. She considered it the finest book ever written. While I might quarrel with that hyperbole, I do in fact list it in my own personal top ten. I, too, re-read it, in my case, every few years. And of course I was riveted to the brilliant BBC production starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder.
Imagine my delight, then, when I found this unabridged reading by Irons himself! My delight was rewarded. Irons' perfect reading of this book opened up a whole new world for me. This time, I heard and felt the absolute poetry of Waugh's words--his ability to take his reader from sultry ... summertime to the slums of the Casbah to a storm at sea that is the perfect metaphor for the turmoil to come. Waugh never wasted a word. Never said more than he had to say. Never helped the reader by sugarcoating the story. And the result was breathtaking.
Maybe because I was listening this time rather than reading, I paid much more attention this time to the book's main theme, religion versus humanity. Can one exist without the other? Does one destroy the other? How far can one stray when bound by the "invisible thread"? Waugh's very personal and moving tale of upper-class Catholics in a Protestant country is a brilliant affirmation of faith, and at the same time, a bitter acknowledgement of the price that faith can exact.
I cannot say enough about this recording, which brings all the best of Waugh to the fore even more so than the written word.

Charles Ryder is the protagonist who we follow from his first days of Oxford through his marriage, divorce and potential engagement. Intertwined with each adventure is the family that owns Brideshead. He is best friends with a son of the owner, a debater of religion with another, and very fond of a daughter.

Ultimately becoming a famous artist of architectural designs which are victims to age or developers' ruin, he becomes famous for his architectural portraits of grand manors and other buildings which are destined for doom. He "preserves" their images with portraits which become plates in books sold to the public.

Like Ryder's paintings, Waugh's writing preserves much of upper class British society. His detailed dialogue infused with their jargon and repertoire is very different from 21st century America, and that is what is so very indelible about this book. Each person speaks as one could only imagine people "like that" did in "those times."

This book has many similarities to "Handful of Dust" - another Waugh classic - as each imports similar characters: a owner of a mansion, an untrue spouse, a British politician who hob nobs with the rich, a playboy, and the others who like fox hunting. But, this novel is more mature, more deep-rooted, more . . . everything.

Unquestionably, a great novel. This book may be the best of the people of Britain in that social scale during the 1920's-40's.

Written in Boswellian memory (where tangible objects elicit greatly detailed memories of one's life)this book has a middle-aged soldier stomp upon a castle named Brideshead from which many memories are emerge.

Charles Ryder is the protagonist who we follow from his first days of Oxford through his marriage, divorce and potential engagement. Intertwined with each adventure is the family that owns Brideshead. He is best friends with a son of the owner, a debater of religion with another, and very fond of a daughter.

Ultimately becoming a famous artist of architectural designs which are victims to age or developers' ruin, he becomes famous for his architectural portraits of grand manors and other buildings which are destined for doom. He "preserves" their images with portraits which become plates in books sold to the public.

Like Ryder's paintings, Waugh's writing preserves much of upper class British society. His detailed dialogue infused with their jargon and repertoire is very different from 21st century America, and that is what is so very indelible about this book. Each person speaks as one could only imagine people "like that" did in "those times."

This book has many similarities to "Handful of Dust" - another Waugh classic - as each imports similar characters: a owner of a mansion, an untrue spouse, a British politician who hob nobs with the rich, a playboy, and the others who like fox hunting. But, this novel is more mature, more deep-rooted, more . . . everything.

Unquestionably, a great novel. This book may be the best of the people of Britain in that social scale during the 1920's-40's.

Charles Ryder, an English soldier, arrives in the middle of the night at the new home of his troops. They are to be stationed at an old country estate. When Charles awakens the next morning, he is surprised to find that he recognizes the place--it is Brideshead, a place with which he was very familiar during his college days. His best friend's family lived there, and Charles descends into memories of the friendship and the collapse of his friend's family.

Sebastian Flyte is unlike anyone Charles has known. He is glamorous and cultured, moody and outrageous. He meets Charles accidentally in their first year at Oxford, and the two become nearly inseparable. Charles is dazzled by his friend and, despite Sebastian's irritation, he ends up becoming close to the rest of the family, too. Sebastian's father is living abroad in scandal with his mistress. Sebastian's mother is at home, clinging to her Roman Catholic faith and worrying about her children. Sebastian's older brother is proper and largely disapproving of Sebastian, but his two sisters love him a great deal.

Every member of the family is affected by their Catholic upbringing, and they are fascinated by Charles, who is an atheist.

As Sebastian begins to feel smothered by his family, he starts drinking heavily. The more he drinks, the more his family tries to keep him under control, to pull him back to the family fold, and this ends up pushing him even more quickly into alcoholism.

In the second part of the book, Charles examines his relationship with Sebastian's sister, Julia, and the two of them observe as the family completely disintegrates.

I really liked the intricate examination of the family, and the ways they interacted with each other, and also the ways that they presented themselves in society. I liked Charles and Sebastian's relationship in the first part of the book, and the ways they balanced each other. I also really liked Charles' father and the quiet war they fought when Charles came home from college penniless for his vacation.

In the second part of the book, it was much more difficult for me to relate to or to like Charles very much. He'd descended into someone so shallow, who was only interested in his own pleasures and ambitions, and who abandoned his family for little reason. Julia, also, became annoying, especially toward the end when she was rediscovering her faith. The characters, so bright and lively at the beginning of the story, became duller toward the end.

In his classic novel "Brideshead Revisited", British author Evelyn Waugh offers an intimate view of English family life during World War II. His story revolves around a dying patriarch, Lord Marchmain, and is narrated by his elder daughter Julia's lover, Charles Ryder. A man notably detached from his emotions, Ryder experiences a dramatic turn-around by novel's end.

Ryder's change of heart comes about during the final months of Marchmain's life. The patriarch himself is not overly concerned with his latest round of failing health and confidently expects to recover. His son Lord Brideshead (Bridey), however, sees otherwise and summons the local priest Father Mackay to anoint his father. Not even pretending hospitality, Marchmain has his younger daughter Cordelia spirit the priest out the door. In the words of his Venetian mistress Cara, Marchmain is a scoffer who disdains the Church.

Marchmain's shabby dismissal of Father Mackay sets a negative tone. Ryder himself chimes in with the sarcastic remark, "The witch-doctor has gone." Skepticism like this, however, provides little comfort to the dying aristocrat. Even his personal physician can do nothing more than to try to keep his patient alive from day to day.

Both Cordelia and Bridey are away when their father's condition takes a sharp turn for the worse. Julia, on the other hand, is at the estate and promptly goes out to call for Father Mackay. After she and the priest return, Mackay gets an update from Marchmain's doctor: the patriarch is now semi-comatose. The priest then goes in to see the dying man and asks him to acknowledge remorse.

At first Marchmain does nothing. Father Mackay anoints him anyway and as he gives him the final blessing, the dying aristocrat surprises everyone by motioning with the sign of the cross. Marchmain thus makes his peace with God and dies reconciled to the Church. For Ryder this is like the "veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom." From then on, both he and Julia know instinctively that their affair is over and that they would be leading separate lives.
Dennis J. Mercieri, Holy Apostles Seminary, Cromwell, CT, USA

Brideshead Revisited is not for everyone. Evely Waugh focuses on what he thinks is important, and he doesn't particularly care if the reader doesn't agree with him. He is also utterly unapologetic about involving things like sin, morality, and God that are looked down upon by modern critics. That is what makes him great as an author.

The true key to this novel is the quote from G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries that is mentioned. The one where Father Brown talks about bringing someone back by a twitch upon the thread. An invisible thread long enough to let someone go to the ends of the world, and still bring him back. That, of course, is what God does in this novel. As Evelyn Waugh said, this novel is about the operation of Divine Grace upon a disparate group of individuals. And so the alcoholic Sebastian, the self-indulgent Julia, and the agnostic Charles are all brought back to God in the end.

It is the effects of time that make this novel so profoundly moving for me. Charles goes for so many years without even thinking of his time at Brideshead, and then one brief meeting with Julia brings it all back to him. And he realizes that nothing he has done in his life since then has been of any real value compared to it. That seems very like life to me, where things you barely noticed or didn't understand later become your most important memories.

It is true that Waugh tends to be overly snobbish about the aristocracy in England. We really must wonder if their passing away was such a bad thing. But he still paints a profound picture of England before World War II, as well as giving us unforgettable characters. This is truly a book worth reading.

There is little to add to the excellent reviews on this book. Nearly seventy years after its first publication in 1944 Brideshead Revisited continues to exert its spell over readers. The PBS series that aired during the 1980s was a routine topic at the "water cooler." In fact, the office eventually organized group viewing sessions so we could drink while we watched the program. It is not possible to ignore the role that Catholicism plays in this novel, but too much can be made of it as well, reducing the scope and importance of Charles Ryder's recollections. What Brideshead accomplishes at the end of the novel is, in my view, quite remarkable. To be sure, Book II of the novel can seem quite distinct from Book I, at least in that Waugh seems not to have laid the groundwork for the novel's fast moving ending. And yet, there is, throughout Brideshead an emphasis on ritual, at Oxford, at the mansion, in the community and within the family. At the end of the novel, it is ritual that forges ahead of belief -- the ritual of last rites for the family patriarch that seems to pull him to belief, not long after he (Alex) had told the attending priest: "I am not in extremis and I have not been a practicing member of your church for twenty-five years." All that past hate did, in the end, turn out to be, as Cara, Lord Marchmain's mistress earlier told us, "something in [himself that he hated] (p 103). Whatever one thinks of the outcome, Brideshead Revisited endures, not for the solution to which it points, but for the questions it raises. Thus it remains relevant from WWII to the present.

Published in 1945, this novel, which Waugh himself sometimes referred to as his "magnum opus," was originally entitled "Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder." The subtitle is important, as it casts light on the themes--the sacred grace and love from God, especially as interpreted by the Catholic church, vs. the secular or profane love as seen in sex and romantic relationships. The tension between these two views of love--and the concept of "sin"--underlie all the action which takes place during the twenty years of the novel and its flashbacks.

When the novel opens at the end of World War II, Capt. Charles Ryder and his troops, looking for a billet, have just arrived at Brideshead, the now-dilapidated family castle belonging to Lord Marchmain, a place where Charles Ryder stayed for an extended period just after World War I, the home of his best friend from Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte. The story of his relationship with Sebastian, a man who has rejected the Catholicism imposed on him by his devout mother, occupies the first part of the book. Sebastian, an odd person who carries his teddy bear Aloysius everywhere he goes, tries to escape his upbringing and religious obligations through alcohol. Charles feels responsible for Sebastian's welfare, and though there is no mention of any homosexual relationship, Charles does say that it is this relationship which first teaches him about the depths of love.

The second part begins when Charles separates from the Flytes and his own family and goes to Paris to study painting. An architectural painter, Charles marries and has a family over the next years. A chance meeting on shipboard with Julia, Sebastian's married sister, brings him back into the circle of the Flyte family with all their religious challenges. Three of the four Flyte children have tried to escape their religious backgrounds, and this part of the novel traces the extent to which they have or have not succeeded in finding peace in the secular world. "No one is ever holy without suffering," he believes.

Dealing with religious and secular love, Heaven and Hell, the concepts of sin and judgment, and the guilt and punishments one imposes on oneself, the novel also illustrates the changes in British society after World War II. The role of the aristocracy is less important, the middle class is rising, and in the aftermath of war, all are searching for values. A full novel with characters who actively search for philosophical or religious meaning while they also search for romantic love, Brideshead Revisited is complex and thoughtfully constructed, an intellectual novel filled with personal and family tragedies--and, some would say, their triumphs. Mary Whipple

"Brideshead Revisited" is about a family and their religious beliefs, viewed from without, as every family and faith must be if they are to be viewed at all. The narrator is, by turns, the friend of one sibling and the lover of another, but neither his affection nor his concern can grant him passage to the haunted chambers of the Brideshead mansion or guide him through the tortured relations its corridors resemble. It is a book about belief and religion, grace and wealth, eros and convention, culture and aristocracy--hence, the good and its shadow. Along with Greene's "The End of the Affair," this is one of the English-speaking world's classic fictional meditations on the hold religious belief exercises on the human heart, regardless of the passions that pull it in other directions.

What sets Waugh apart (along with the likes of Joyce and McCarthy) from other great novelists is the sheer beauty of his prose. Reading the first few pages never fails to move me to tears, and I don't know exactly why. But even the sound of the words in my mind is like the linguistic equivalent of a chocolate truffle, melting before you can savor it. Waugh writes like John Singer Sargent paints--with exquisite attention to every brushstroke--so that's it's not just the cumulative effect of the ideas which moves you, but the words and sentences themselves, as if the profundity of the story somehow overflows its bounds to leak back into every word with which it is told.

Not entirely sure how I feel about this novel. I spent the first half of it thinking it reminded me of Catcher In The Rye (a book which I very much disliked) while it was exploring the relationship between Charles Ryder, the narrator, and his eccentric best friend Sebastian. The nature of their relationship is never quite made clear. The book became more intersecting to me during the latter parts of the novel when Ryder becomes involved with Sebastian's sister, Julia. The overriding theme of the book is Catholicism and how it affects the characters and their lives. It is definitely not a upliting book, as none of the characters get a happy ending.

This book is not written in accordance with current literary tastes. It is descriptive to the point where it is florid sometimes; the writer's politics and elitism can easily offend(he is thoughtlessly snobbish towards characters such as Hooper); and he is describing a vanished world that can be difficult to understand--the sort of aristocrats he describes do not exist anymore and maybe they shouldn't exist (one could reasonably call them parasites). However, the same things could be said about many of the novels that are most worth reading (think of novels from nineteenth century Russia for example). The sensitive reader will soon realize that Waugh is talking about the human condition in this book and showing the necessity of faith, as all that they have materially cannot satisfy these people. They still have a void that can only be filled by God and God pulls them, no matter how much they try to run away from this fact. These are real human beings who are involved in definite sins such as adultery; homosexuality (though it is unclear whether Sebastian and Charles have a physical relationship, the homoerotic undertones in their relationship are very strong, and there are several other openly homosexual characters);alcoholism runs rampant; the narrator has the sin of pride. However, God has grace to handle all of it, and Waugh brilliantly uses Dante's philosophy of human love (including the sinful love such as the adultery and that with the homoerotic element) leading human beings towards the divine love which it is a mirror of. He will make you uncomfortable and challenge your late twentieth/early twenty-first century ideas of moral relativism as he is very uncompromising about what is right and what is wrong and believes in such unstylish things as 'sin', 'redemption', 'duty' and 'sacrifice'. However, he NEVER preaches. The depiction of Sebastian in his later years is one of the most moving things, I think, in all literature, as he describes the destruction of his beauty and his grace in the alcoholism, shows what a total wreck he has made of his life by worldly standards, and yet lets you feel that he has achieved something else with his pain, which is the salvation of his soul. And so there is hope for Julia, for Charles and for all of the other extremely flawed people in this novel. In a world that seems to be dying (one of the best things about the book is its depiction of the world at war).
Maybe some of us could use some of this message in a world in which so many more people, not just the 'aristocrats' but also the 'Hoopers' of the world (at least in Europe and America) have so much financially, and are spiritually so miserable. And don't even realise that our disease is spiritual, or if we do, try to salve it with easy, patched-together counterfeits of religion that can do nothing for us, like people taking pleasant-tasting placebos instead of real medicine.

Waugh's structure is OK, although there is at least one loss of plot, in which the castle is to be torn down and then it is still there. But, face it, this is just Waugh's propaganda pitch for his conversion to Catholicism!

This partial account of the life of the central character, Charles Ryder utilizes the "flashback" technique to show contrast between the barbaric present (1943) and the rich, full life that he had from the period of 1923 to 1939. As he enters the university we initially see Charles as he was taught to be, in reality a somewhat small and boring figure, never having experienced the joys of boyhood, but is given a glimpse of happiness during his tenure at Oxford and beyond, where he is influenced by a fateful encounter with members of an Aristocratic family. Charles discovers his true vocation as an Artist and is accepted as a member of the "smart set" that is a part of the Marchmain family social scene. The tragic aspect centers on the dictum: "life does not always turn out like you planned". At one point Charles seems on the verge of inheriting the entire Marchmain estate due to his intended marriage with Julia but everything falls apart due to religious convictions, and world events. In Waugh's intent, he wants to show how the structure of society was shaken by World War 1 and completely destroyed by World War 2. When Charles speaks of the era of "Hooperism" he is implying that now an uneducated, somewhat disrespectful class of people were now ruling society and would lead us to a new dark age. When we return to the present in 1943 Charles is forlorn and regretful of all that has transpired, but he comes to accept things as they are having by chance returned to Brideshead in the army encampment and through those memories of the past renews the vigor within himself.

This is not the only abridged edition of a literary work the store is offering without any warning at all that it's abridged. If Kindle books are to be acceptable to serious readers, full disclosure is a must.

Moreover, the store is accepting for distribution "Kindle" versions of books that are so shabbily scanned that the errors interrupt the reading flow. In most cases one can see how machine scanning could cause the error; what's not acceptable is that no editor has gone through the product with a fine-tooth comb before putting it out there.

Don't buy them when warned, return them when surprised, and call them out by name - identifying publisher if possible.

Charler Ryder, a rather sarcastic non-beleiver, reminisces about his experiences at Brideshead Mansion and its owners the Flyte's.
Ryder first meets the family through his friendship with Sebastian a rather foppish character whose life is spiralling wildly out of control. A homosexual liason between Charles and Sebastian is presumed and Charles eventually recognizes that Sebastian is beyond help and he begins his own career. Charles marries and for all intent and purpose Sebastian's character fades away.
While travelling back to England from America, Charles encounters Julia, Sebastian's sister. Julia and Charles begin a love affair that is doomed by Charles' failure to accept Julia's reembrace of the Catholic church.
The decline of the aristocratic family is seen in the lifes and deaths of the family members and the Brideshead mansion itself.

A classic of 20th century British literature and a book one is not likely to ever forget. This is the very sad depiction of an aristocratic family's decline and fall in the years between the two world wars. It is one of those rare novels where the reader doesn't necessarily have to like any of the characters to be moved by them. Through the brittle and rather unsympathetic narration of Charles Ryder, the reader is given glimpses of a world sundered by the hypocrisies of sex, religion, and class and the impending cataclysm of World War Two. We come to know the Marchmain family without really knowing them, much as Charles - an outsider himself - does. Still, this does not deflect from our sympathy for Sebastian's alcoholic devolution or the repressed misery of the tragically beautiful Julia.
Read the book and then rent the splendid - and faithful - BBC adaptation starring a young Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, and Diana Quick. Both novel and film will haunt you.

Never before has a novel affected me in so many different ways over so long a time. The older I get, the more brilliant it becomes. It's about love and innocence and innocence lost and tragic dysfunction. In other words, absolutely real life, regardless of its period. I've never come across such profound use of language as his is in presenting this story as art on the page. Now, I'm in my mid-thirties and as each period of time goes by in my life and I re-read this again, another truth is realized within it. It's magically romantic, and as most love is, it is also sorrowfully tragic as demons hatch out of previously enchanting objects, and desires shift, and hearts tire from being so long malnourished. You'll be right there at Oxford from the moment the characters begin their journey, so if you're someone who loves to get lost in a novel, go go go, but understand that you'll pay for the highs of innocence with the lows of inevitable life experience. You're only really young and in love for so long before life takes over to settle you down for good. How you cope with that reality is the measure of your character after all is said and done. But who of us doesn't look back and delight in our innocence and the true love we felt in our youth? You'll find that place in this novel and enjoy yourself within it. I fall in love again every time i read it!

Brideshead Revisited is a beautiful tale about the destruction charm can cause. How the beauty and charm of upperclass life can destroy relationships.
Evelyn Waugh paints his characters very clearly. Charles Ryder is the upper-middleclass intelligent Oxford student who sees that there is more to Oxford life than mere study. He sees the upperclass and wants to be part of it. Of the parties, of the social circle, of the splendour of their world.
Sebastian is a lonesome soul. Using his religion as a toy, a frobbel. He yurns for love, but struggles with homosexuality. Therefore he has no romantic relationship with either a man or a woman until Charles arrives. Charles is not homosexual, but he fills the hole in Sebastian's soul.
It is one of the best books in English I've ever read. It is superb.

This is a spectacular, beautifully written novel. I bought this hardcover edition because I wanted to read the introduction by Frank Kermode. It offered a lot of background information pertaining to the novel, as well as references to previous editions and a timeline of the author's life.
The story itself is very intriguing. Containing all the elements of a tragic love story-forbidden love, a love triangle, betrayal, and death, I found myself hooked from the first chapter. What I found most intriguing was the second conflict-Charles' struggle with his own spirituality while he spent time at Brideshead. Although I found the text easy to read and understand, I still wouldn't call it a "beach read."
This is one book I will recommend to all my literary friends and will pick up time and time again. Although it may not be for everyone, I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.

It's surprising to see a relatively serious novel like "Brideshead Revisited" from Evelyn Waugh, whose reputation as a writer was built on humor. It confronts a difficult theme -- the disintegration of a once-noble British family by two world wars and changes in the social and moral fabric of the first half of the twentieth century. But Waugh handles the material with the aplomb of a natural storyteller and the objectivity of an observer who is wise enough never to become too symphathetic with his characters.
"Brideshead Revisited" is narrated in flashback through the voice of a British Army captain named Charles Ryder, who one day in 1943 inadvertently finds himself near an estate called Brideshead which he recognizes as a place he'd first seen twenty years before. His memories take us directly back to 1923 when he was a freshman at Oxford and befriended a fellow student named Lord Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian is pampered, effeminate, and abnormally juvenile; he spends more time drinking than studying and owns a teddy bear. Now, I realize that it's not absurd for a grown man to own a teddy bear, but it is when he frequently refers to the bear by its christened name, treats it as a confidant, and brings it with him on outings. With Sebastian, Charles finds himself moving in a new social circle, illuminated by the even more flamboyantly effeminate and sexually ambiguous Anthony Blanche.
Sebastian is secretive about his family but nevertheless takes Charles to visit the family house at Brideshead. Eventually Charles does get to meet Sebastian's sisters Julia and Cordelia, his older brother the Earl of Brideshead, and his (separated) parents, Lord and Lady Marchmain. It's apparent that Sebastian dislikes his family, especially his pious Catholic mother; his excessive drinking is a means to escape his unhappiness. Charles, meanwhile, sort of adopts this family as his own and becomes intimately involved in their affairs; his own father -- his only close living relative -- is somewhat of a doddering old fool and not much good company.
Over the following years, the characters grow and develop as all good characters should. Julia marries a budding politician named Rex Mottram, who makes a comically clumsy attempt at conversion to Catholicism before the wedding; Charles becomes an artist and starts an affair with Julia during a stormy Atlantic crossing; the Earl collects matchboxes; Cordelia, the most conscientious of the Flytes, becomes a humanitarian aid worker. Sebastian, who is so central early in the novel, gradually falls out of the picture; years of idleness, apathy, irresponsibility, and debauchery lead him to a miserable existence in northern Africa.
There is significance in Charles's chosen profession -- that of an artist who paints architectural portraits of ancient English manors -- because it parallels his role as historian and chronicler of the decadent Flyte family; he gives the impression of a curator proudly showing a portrait of a stately old house or family and saying, "This was once a great monument of England." "Brideshead Revisited" is not an outright funny novel like "Scoop" (although there is an amusing cross-reference to the Beast, the newspaper from "Scoop"), but it is still filled with Waugh's wry charm and his effortlessly mellifluous prose.

A perfect delight. Long did I search for this novel: long did I search for Waugh! When I first picked it up (I call it fate), it was only a matter of moments before I knew in my heart that we were old friends. It has the sensational richness and deepness of European aristocratic life, and an unparalleled portrayal of early century Oxford. Just delicious. I couldn't put it down, and when I did I felt a regular beast, and picked it up again. Everything I love about literature was preparing me for this novel. Read it. Of course Waugh's a staunch Catholic, and that (God love him!) only sharpens his mind for what is vice and folly. But you get goodness and beauty, too.

This is written by Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (1903 to 1966) a British writer best known for this present work and the following novels: Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, and The Sword of Honour trilogy. I read A Handful of Dust a few months ago and thought that the present book had more in it, i.e.: longer and a more interesting read, and it had a more realistic plot. According to what we know, Waugh had a few second thoughts about the present book.

The story is really three stories that are separated in time which have been pieced together. It is set in post WWI England and it is about the protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at Oxford University college and his encounter with members of the Flyte family at Brideshead. The novel contains descriptions of his life as a student and then folllows through ten years or so into his adult life and his marriage.

I will try and not give away the plot but give a quick sketch. The three pieces or sub-plots are his relationship with Sebastian Flyte, then Julia Flyte his sister, and then finally Lord Marchmain, an Anglican, converted to his wife's religion which is Roman Catholicism.

Each of the three sub-plots has a different slant to the story. The relation with Sebastian is similar to an Oscar Wilde situation, and the reader is left in doubt to the extent of the relationship. Is it physical or platonic? Also, the author brings in the subject of alcoholism. Finally, that first section gives us a glimpse of life at Oxford post WWI.

The central to last part of the novel with Julia is a more conventional love story, and then at the end we have the theme of divine grace and reconciliation of the father.

Most people focus on the theme of Catholicism, and I thought that theme was rather weak until the last ten pages or so. One can suspect that the author has taken this approach so as not to isolate the audience early in the novel. We can assume the audience for the novel is not Catholic.

Does it work? As a simple novel or as an entertaining work of art it works and the novel is interesting; it is ingenious and is a compelling read after the first 40 pages or so.

As an advertisement for the Catholic faith I am less sure that the book works but the reader can judge.

Recommend: 5 stars.

This is not Waugh's best novel, but is perhaps his enduringly most popular thanks to Granada's immortalisation of the book in the film version with Jeremy Irons, John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Andrews and others. Often sentimental, often dogmatic, and even, in places, precious, Brideshead remains an important part of Waugh's fictional constructions.
Both a coming-of-age novel, and a paean to the English stately home, Brideshead melds history with fiction. Beginning in the midst of WWII, the story weaves back to the narrator's time at Oxford, his interaction with the Flyte family and his introduction to their home, Brideshead. The novel ends by returning to the wartime barracks and provides an image of post-war hope, despite the rain and the gloom and the depression of war and loss. The hope does not stem from a regaining of the past, or the revival of the narrator's relationships with the Flyte family, but instead comes from his acceptance of the Catholic faith - which plays a large role in the novel, as both the narrator's foil and his eventual salvation.
This novel may not sit well with readers who enjoyed novels such as Vile Bodies or Black Mischief or Scoop, but will appeal to readers who enjoy Waugh's humour without necessarily enjoying his usual acerbity.

Just as *The Great Gatsby* captured the grand excess of the American Jazz Age, so too does Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece *Bridehead Revisited* capture the age of pre-war decadence. The clash between have and have not, so called class and commonness and Catholocism and athieism is brilliantly laid agains a backdrop of education and sexuality. A true coming of age novel, *Bridehead* captures a portrait of a young Charles Ryder as an artist. Content to live his destiny of middle class anguish, Charles meets the challange of his lifetime in Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian, an over grwon child, introduces Charles to a teddy bear named Aloysius, as well as his own upper crust band of misfits family who change the way Charles thinks about life, love, religion and money forever. From Oxford to the war, Waugh gives the reader a hint of a Britain loyal to the monarchy, yet more loyal to themselves. Read *Brideshead* with an open mind of the beauty you are receiving as a reader: the sybolism of the flower throughout, grand side characters like Anthony Blanche, and the little red light near the end that ties up Charles Ryder's visit to Brideshead in the same manner the green light across the lake summed up Gatsby's.

I loved reading this book for two reasons, first it completely transported me into another country and into another era. Second, it captured the sheer joy of youthful friendship, where the responsibilities and trials of later life have not yet taken their toll.
To me, the book realisticly portrayed the drama of life and how life's experiences change not only a persons outlook on life, but changes the dynamics between friends with whom, at some point, we felt we could never live without. What causes friendships that were once so close, to gradually fade away? This poetic tale allows you to ponder the delicate nature of both friendships and romantic relationships. Every once in a while you get in the mood for a story that will leave you in an introspective, if not melancholy mood......this is such a story.

If you've never read anything by Waugh before, this is a good place to start. It keeps enough of his humor to be read for enjoyment, but it certainly included other themes--religion, friendship, betrayal (classic soap-opera love stories).

But before you read it, you should be aware that Brideshead Revisited is really two books. The first half is about the narrator, Charles Ryder, and his relationship with Sebastian Flyte. After they meet in college (Sebastian gives Charles a hothouse full of flowers), they develop an extremely close, possibly homoerotic relationship. Sebastian introduces Charles to his family, and the whole thing begins to slowly fall apart in chapters that are painful to read.

The second half of the book is about Charles' relationship with Sebastian's sister, Julia. It could be said that this is more psychologically accurate than the first half of the book, as all of the characters' flaws are exposed in gory detail. However, it's simply less fun to read. One of the most important characters from the first half, who you will probably love as much as I did, simply disappears. The two halves of the book are very sloppily connected, as Waugh tries to change course too quickly.

With the movie coming out soon, it might be a good idea to read this book now. Unlike the TV series, the plot of the movie looks to be significantly changed. Despite it's serious flaws, Brideshead Revisited is worth reading and enjoying on its own merits.

Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite books of all time. Alas, this, being my first journey into the mind of Evelyn Waugh, has ruined me for his other novels as they are not very similar to this one. This book, for me, has had a magical aura. It was written Post World War I, as a treatise to the past, which explains the grand departure from style and content from other novels. Charles Ryder returns to the Brideshead estate, releasing memories of his school days and his friendship with the exquisite Sebastian Flyte.
This novel also carries an extreme theme of Catholicism and a family's attempt to flee from the faith of their mother. Like an unwoven spider web, the children, Sebastian, Julia, and Cordelia eventually become ensnared and return to the religion their mother showed them when they were children.
This is an amazing novel. Whimsical and sad, at once. This is a must-read.

For a couple of bucks, you get Brideshead Revisted on your Kindle !!! You get Waugh's classic story dropped into your mind. (Good copy is not the point of inexpensive e-books.) Screw the typos; Just read the story and count yourself lucky to be hanging out with Charles Ryder and a bunch of religiously whacked out pre-War Upper class Brits....back when religion mattered. Speaking of bad copies, last night, i saw the DVD of the new movie version of Brideshead; and it'a a very poor copy of the original movie with Jeremy Irons et al. Don't go there just download the Kindle version and run with it. The new movie doesn't hold a candle to the e-book.

Aeons ago I was a great pal of Binkie Carstairs, the original of 'Sebastian Flyte' in poor old Evelyn's little novel. (I understand that this is not what the worthy critics say, but let them have their hour.) Binkie was a man of pungent wit, a happily unrepentant sybarite, a mixer of the best martinis this side of Suez, and a dispenser of priceless bon mots, none of which I can now remember. Lord alone knows whether - in terms of characterization, dialogue, setting, use of the weather etc - poor Evelyn's novel is really up to the mark. The word 'overrated' is sometimes bandied about. Of that I am no judge. But as a ritratto of darling Binkie, 'Brideshead' will always seem to those who really knew him a ghastly travesty. O tempora, O Binkie!

While this was Waugh's least favourite of his own books, the one that he blamed for exposing him to the trials of fan mail and public recognition, it is in fact, a great and glorious book. Spanning the short adult life of Sebastian Flyte, it is told retrospectively through the eyes of his friend and former lover Charles, who goes on, once youthful experimentation is over, to carry on an equally passionate and hopeless love affair with Sebastian's sister. But in some ways, these themes are not the great story. The larger pictures are of the slackening grip of British aristocracy, the power of love and the power of Faith. Waugh paints a masterpiece of the sweet, desperate years between the wars, at Oxford, in London and Paris, with one generation lost and the next helplessly watching history lurching towards a repetition of the same madness.

Evelyn Waugh's BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is a troubling and flawed work of genius. Written during World War II and framed by the conversion of the Brideshead estate into an army camp during the war, the novel depicts the youth and early adulthood of one Charles Ryder. The 40-year-old army captain that the war makes of Ryder recalls the days of his optimistic youth as a close friend of teddy-bear toting Sebastian Flyte, younger son of the Brideshead household and classmate of his at Oxford. Sebastian awakens much in Charles, and it is arguable whether he doesn't awaken more than does his sister Julia, who later becomes Ryder's fiancee.
For the 220 or so pages that constitute Part One this book comes off as a splendid (though not aggressively hostile) satire of upper class British society in the 1920s. Especially of the particular damage that the "long-suffering" Catholic mother can do to her loved ones (I kept thinking, "O, the martyrdom!" every time Lady Marchmain used one of her patented guilt trips to twist the psychological and spiritual arms of her children--Sebastian most often.) BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is also a powerful "lost illusions" type of novel, but the particular illusions lost don't seem any more attractive than the reality that replaces them. "Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions--with the aid of my five senses," says Charles, but that seems limiting, doesn't it? It does to Waugh but his answer isn't necessarily any more appealing. Part One is hilarious and promises much. Part Two, sorry to say, does not deliver on that promise. The satire stops and the soap opera begins. Sebastian disappears and Ryder becomes a much less sympathetic character--why he would fall in love with Julia in the first place is hard to fathom.
A great problem with this novel is that it seems to place the Catholic religion in an unflattering light to the extent that the reader would think that Waugh himself was anti-Catholic. Think again. He was a convert well before he wrote this book and despite the fact that he DOES present Catholicism as being the last thing anyone would want to fall into, people fall. The fact that they fall into rather than embrace Catholicism sucks away whatever joy might have been left in the novel--I was reminded of the line from Kevin Smith's movie DOGMA, paraphrased here: "Catholics don't celebrate their faith, they mourn it."
So, in celebration I must say that to call Waugh a fine writer is to sell him far too short. He is a masterful stylist and a brilliant wit who can lift you up and get under your skin. Let him.

This is another of those books that has been on my to-read list for years, which people regularly recommended but which I kept pushing down the list . . . probably because I've never been particularly partial those other works of Waugh's which I've read -- superficial and stilted parodies like _Decline and Fall,_ _Vile Bodies,_ and _The Loved One._ But _Brideshead_ is, happily, quite different and shows Waugh at what I take to be his best. Charles Ryder, artist and scion of a minor upper class family, is a captain during World War II whose unit is posted to a large estate (Brideshead), a place where he spent some of the happiest, and unhappiest, times of his life back in the early 1920s, when he was at Oxford with Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of the wealthy and Catholic Marchmain family. The first part of the book is the story of the rise and fall of the friendship between Ryder and Sebastian, who hates his mother and sinks into alcoholism. The second part, which seems disconnected, is the story of Charles's success and the collapse of his marriage, and of his tenuous affair with Julia, Sebastian's sister. And that's about all the plot there is. But I enjoyed the book mostly for Waugh's mastery of character evolution, his depiction of the changes in Sebastian's grasp on the real world and on the growth of Ryder's cynicism. The supporting characters are fascinating: Sebastian's eldest brother, Brideshead (a lovely name!); the younger, pious sister, Cordelia; their friends, Anthony Blanche and Boy Mulcaster, who grow from tiresome undergraduates to men occasionally worth listening to; Julia's Canadian husband, Rex Mottrom; Sebastian's parents and Charles's father, and even quite minor figures in the story. There are also some great comic scenes, such as the thoroughly heathenish Rex's efforts to be converted to Roman Catholicism to please Julia's family, and Cousin Jasper's disquisition on how to be a proper Oxford Man. And Waugh's take on the peculiarities of the Anglo-Catholic world are very good. On the other hand, few of these characters are actually worth the reader's sympathy; they all have far too much money and the associated freedom to do just as they please, and none of them ever contributes much, if anything, to society at large.

I did a "cold" reading of this novel; that is to say, I read it without having seen the film version or even having read a synopsis of the plot. All I knew was that I wanted to read an Evelyn Waugh novel, and this one seemed to be most well known and well respected of the bunch.

This was quite a good read. The narrator's voice is laced with humor as well as quiet reflection, and he captivated me from the beginning. The first half of the novel, chronicling Charles Ryder's friendship with an eccentric young aristocrat, is the better half -- entertaining, original, quirky, unexpected. The second half takes the novel in a more conventional direction (though there was still plenty to keep me going).

Beyond the social commentary and homoerotic undertones which are often central to people's analyses of the novel, Brideshead Revisited is first and foremost just a good read -- a detailed character study, a portrait of a family, a view into another world.

This is not THE FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW, but it is close. An outsider, Charles Ryder, (a near orphan), is befriended by a family, Lord and Lady Marchmain and their children, Bridey, Julia, Sebastian, and Cordelia. Of particular importance to the progression of the story are Sebastian and Julia.

Published in the United States in 1945, the novel has enduring interest as witnessed by the television mini-series and the movie. A contemporary reviewer noted that Waugh was writing at the top of his form, that the book was mature Waugh. The description of the art noveau style decoration of the chapel at Brideshead Castle is priceless.

Waugh uses a bundle of qualities to typify the major characters. That is to say, they stand for this and that, and may be visualised in such and such a way. And, as in so much of Waugh, the reader is shown the characters in action, they speak at great length, exhaustively. There are embedded first-person narratives, that of Charles Ryder in the outer ring, addressing the reader, and Anthony Blanche speaking to Charles at length, for example.

The reader need not be concerned that there is nothing funny in the volume under review, because there is. The portrait of Charles Ryder's father endeavoring to diversify Charles's evenings at home during the vacation is one of many instances of merriment. When Charles spends part of the same vacation with Sebastian Flyte, the author describes youth as langorous, generous.

Unfortunately the golden days of Charles and Sebastian don't last. Sebastian is sent down from Oxford and Charles goes to seek preparation for his career in the visual arts. When Charles is dismissed from Brideshead by Sebastian's mother he feels that he is entering reality. Charles leaves with an understanding the banishment is to last forever.

When his mother, Lady Marchmain, is dying, Charles sets out for Morocco in search of Sebastian. Sebastian is withered by drink. Charles arranges for Sebastian's brother Bridey to give him an allowance. Charles receives a commission to paint the house at Brideshead, his first.

Both Sebastian and Julia return to the practice of religion, Catholicism. The return has many consequences to their own lives and the life of Charles.

The book is both witty and good.

Not only are Catholics a minority in Britain, but the Anglican Church is the official state-sponsored religion. Our narrator, a non-Catholic officer based on the home front in World War II Britain, revisits a mansion he first visited as a young man and reflects back on his close relationship with a Catholic family. A non-Catholic himself, he reports to us about their habits and customs almost as if he were an anthropologist visiting a tribe in the tropical rainforest. It's a great book and, of course, it's been made into a Masterpiece Theatre series years ago. There are many reviews of this work already, so just to illustrate the excellent writing, I will just say that I think the romantic episode on an ocean liner during a storm at sea (her husband is absent; his wife is laid up with seasickness) is the most romantic passage I can think of in literature.

The purchase of Brideshead Revisited is one of sure investments in your library. You will revisit it very often because it is one of the books that will keep you in its thrall forever. Actually, I have a copy in my desk in the office and pick it up to read a few pages when my students are late for meeting.
This is a book which can be read in many ways - most of which open up a new perspective on its contents and some of which may help you understand yourself and those you choose to share it with. It may be read as a Christian treatise (Waugh took this quite seriously) and a memoir of studies at Oxford in the 1920s. A story of a misplaced homosexual affection and story of decline of British aristocracy. Whichever way you choose you will not be disappointed.

"Brideshead Revisited" transports us to the memories of Charles Ryder, a young official of the British army in World War II. Fate makes him come back to Brideshead, where years before his best friend's family -the Flyte's- lived. He first met Sebastian Flyte at Oxford, then he introduced him to the rest of his family.
Evelyn Waugh illustrates a passionate story of real people who face real problems, and who have to take decisions from the deepest part of their conscience. Disagreements will be clear between the disbeliever Charles and the members of this profoundly catholic family, whose charming siblings Charles could never forget. However, time shall put everything right.
Sebastian is the perfect characterisation of the young student who faces a state of great freedom, living away from home, at Oxford. His eldest sister, Julia, is an independent young woman who tries to settle down in her life. Both of them would change Charles' mind in some way.
Maybe, it is the characters that I enjoyed the most about this novel. When I read it, I actually shared their aspirations, their problems, their thoughts.
I think that readers will find it easy to read, a gripping book which will introduce them to a charming home that would never be forgotten, as happened to Charles Ryder.

Evelyn Waugh's BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is a flawed masterpiece. It is his only major novel that is not fundamentally a comic novel, as well as his most clearly religious one. In the opinion of many readers - for instance, the great British novelist Henry Green wrote his friend Waugh that he loved the book but did not care for the ending. Famed critic Edmund Wilson felt the same way, as have many, many readers. Charles Ryder's conversion and the not terribly breakup of his and Julia's engagement are not very compelling or convincing. First his intense hostility to Lord Marchmain's taking Last Rites seems to come out of nowhere - at least in its strength and intensity - and then his conversion is even more out of the blue. Waugh had intended the novel to be about Divine Grace, but most readers, including most Christians, find the religious aspects of the book off putting, not least because his theology is unpalatable. Most Catholics that I have talked to find his religious views harsh and un-Christian and Protestants care for them even less. This was my third time to read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED and all three times the ending of the book struck me as hollow and unconvincing.

Yet, this is one of my favorite books. How can I love a book so deeply that ends so poorly? There are three reasons. First, Charles Ryder's narrative voice is one of the most splendid in all of literature. His world-weary and defeated telling of the tale is poetic and beautiful, though heartbreaking and unspeakably sad. I would place Charles among the four or five most haunting narrators in all of literature. Second, Waugh's dialogues are exceptionally fine. On a first reading there are dozens of conversations that stick with the reader and get replayed in one's mind over and over. The best in the book are actually not dialogues but monologues by Anthony Blunt, one of the most entrancing supporting characters in fiction. Third, Waugh has created in this book some of the most vividly conceived characters in English literature. All three of these factors merge to create many of the most perfect moments one could hope to experience.

All of which makes the ending of the novel even more heartbreaking. As a Catholic convert Waugh wanted to write the Great Catholic Novel for his age. I don't think he succeeded. He made nothing even remotely resembling a case for Catholic belief. Waugh's God - or at least the God projected by the Brideshead set - is hard and implacable and unyielding. But Waugh did manage to created an unforgettable novel of frustrated dreams of youth and self-destruction. Oddly enough, despite the novel beings set among the last days of the English aristocracy and its supplanting by business tycoons - though both feature in the novel as background - it isn't too much about changing class in Britain. But focusing on those elements would have made the book about something other than it was. It was about the individuals belonging to the class rather than the class itself, though the knowledge of what was happening to the class lies like a shadow in the background.

The book is also structured around the two romances that Charles has with two members of the Flyte family. It isn't made clear whether Sebastian and Charles have a physical relationship, but their friendship, even if platonic, is clearly romantic. In one way Charles's affair with Julia is merely the consummation of what had started with Sebastian, something that Charles says explicitly to Julia.

Had the ending of this book been up to the level of the rest of the book, this might well have been one of the finest English novels ever written. Even as it is, it is a very fine book. I don't think it is Waugh's best novel, even though it contains some of the best things he ever wrote (my vote for his most perfect books would be the Sword of Honour Trilogy, SCOOP, and A HANDFUL OF DUST). And the novel is one of the reasons that Waugh is among my favorite writers. I look forward to reading it for a fourth time.

I additionally strongly recommend the exceptionally find BBC miniseries based upon the novel, starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews as Sebastian and Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain. I honestly believe that it is the single finest production ever made for television and it is pretty much a scene for scene recreation of the novel. It is also the finest version of a novel that I believe has ever been done either for television or film.

I can't say enough good things about this book. I read this book once a year because even though it is a fairly melancholy story, I get so lost and enraptured with it and its beautiful language. Seeing the movie first prompted me to read it, the book is so much better! As an Anglophile I love a good story about English aristocrats and per-war Britain. This story is so rich and beautifully written by Waugh that every time I read it I find myself underlining new quotes and and passages. A must read!

Brideshead Revisited is a deeply moving book with sections that are better classified as poetry than prose -- from the opening sequence of Charles Ryder looking back at Brideshead and his past, comparing his falling out of love with the army to a man who has fallen out of love with his wife; to the scene where Charles and Julia crash against the wall aboard the windswept ship, her body pressed against his as he gazes out at the starry sky through her long hair against his face.
But even more than the poetry of this book and the beautiful descriptions of Oxford and the time in which it is set (interwar Britain), it is the slowly unfolding tragedy of the book that makes it so appealing and moving. That, and the gradual but inexorable process of Charles' journey into maturity and the recognition that there is more to life than he had first realised. Definitely one of my favourite books of all time.

If you love the BBC TV mini-series based on Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", it's not an option not to own this book! While the script and dialogue almost follow line by line from the novel, it is an immense pleasure to read the actual novel and savour Waugh's witty and delightful writing style. His education at Lancing and Hertford College at Oxford, comes through vividly in the book about the friendship between Charles Ryder and Lord Sebastian Flyte who met at the Oxford University and their choices and journeys in life. This edition with Evelyn Waugh's photo on the front cover is my favourite.

[...]

GENERAL SPOILER ALERT: If you've never read Brideshead Revisited, and would like to discover it with no previous knowledge of the plot, I suggest you stop here. Since it was published in 1944, I'm writing with the assumption that I'm the one late to the party and many of you lovers of literary fiction have probably either read it already or are super familiar with the plot. So, if not, stop. Now. You've been warned.

Confession time: Until a few years ago, I thought Evelyn Waugh's name was pronounced Eh-vah-lynn Wow, and that he was a she. I wish I were kidding. One of the great epic fails in book snobbery. Regardless, every time I passed the "W" section at the bookstore or library, I'd see her his titles with their gorgeous cover art...but upon reading the back summary and coming to the words "set against the backdrop of World War II," I usually put the book back on the shelf. With few exceptions, I love historical fiction...as long as the book doesn't take place entirely in the trenches. Before you yell, please note that I'm sure my bias has kept me from discovering a great many tomes. I just have a hard time getting into several hundred pages of war and destruction and blood and death and politics and guns and moral turmoil and brotherly bonding/bromance, etc. I know full well that there are many notable works of literature (mostly by dead white dudes) with fabulous plot lines and gorgeous prose (A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls...well, just Hemingway in general, War and Peace, All Quiet on the Western Front), and I'm sure I'll slug through a few of them for the general-betterment-of-self/expansion-of-overall-cultural-literacy at some point...it's just not my favorite.

BUT a few months ago, I DVR'd (yes, I still DVR) Brideshead Revisited when it aired on Ovation and fell in love with the story. And when Waugh's name came up again in the Mitford biography I'm reading (he was friends with Nancy Mitford and is said to have taken inspiration from the Mitford kids among other Bright Young Things of the era), I read up on him and decided to add this and Vile Bodies to my 30-before-30 literary bucket list.

Brideshead Revisited is, in fact, set in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, the years leading up to World War II, though only the prologue takes us anywhere near the trenches (phew!). Charles Ryder, our narrator, and his unit are stationed at Brideshead, which serves as catalyst for Charles to reflect on how he came to know the house and to tell the story of his two great loves who grew up there: Sebastian and Julia Flyte.

I know there's debate as to whether the nature of the deep relationship between Charles and Sebastian had a sexual aspect....in my opinion, Charles' love for Sebastian (and vice versa) was absolutely romantic (see the definition), in terms of their relationship being imbued with their desire for adventure and their idealization of and total dependence on the other, often steeped in a reality exclusively their own. Also, I think they probably had sex at one point. Or at more than one point. Or at least fooled around. It was an era of experimentation (booze! jazz!), and it wasn't super uncommon for young men to experiment that way in boarding school or when away at college, or because they were, in fact, gay or bisexual, etc. (n.b. Tom Mitford, brother of Nancy Mitford et al, for example, is thought to have had at least one homosexual relationship in his youth and according to this Telegraph UK article, Waugh may or may not have been involved at one point with a gentlemen who has been said to have inspired Sebastian). I loved the contrast Waugh was able to strike between the love shared by Charles and Sebastian and the love shared by Charles and Julia. Charles and Sebastian's relationship imploded because, in a way, they preferred to cling to the idealized version of the other (it's hard to live in the reality where the person you feel closest to is an alcoholic with some fairly deep emotional problems. I think, in many ways, Sebastian's flight to Morocco, etc. occurred out of love for Charles, to protect Charles from destructive force he knew he had become. Maybe on some level, Charles understood it as the gift of a unmarred, idyllic past, as he says on page 203 "These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me."). Charles and Julia's romance imploded because they failed to move beyond the reality of their situation (i.e. Julia's deeply entrenched Catholic belief system was a tad restrictive, and then there was her nagging insistence upon avoiding eternal damnation...a bit prohibitive to a divorce/second marriage to another divorcee who also happens to be an agnostic). It's a book as much about denial as it is about desire, and how both can be acts of love.

My favorite character by far was Cordelia, Sebastian Flyte's young sister, and I died laughing at scene where she talks Catholicism with Charles upon their first meeting:

"[Cordelia says] 'D'you know, if you weren't an agnostic, I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black god-daughter.'
[Charles] 'Nothing will surprise me about your religion.'
[Cordelia] 'It's a new thing a missionary priest started last term. You send five bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you. I've got six black Cordelias already. Isn't it lovely?' "(p. 82)

She's so precocious, and fancies herself to be so forward thinking, yet she acts almost as a mirror against which Waugh is able to reflect back everything he saw wrong with the Catholic church at the time (and possibly with religion in general, but given that he and I never discussed the matter, this is purely conjecture), but she's also such a likable character due to her youth and wit. Through Cordelia especially, Waugh shows us how no person is only one thing; that no thing is either solely good or bad.

Waugh was such a dynamic and flexible writer. He possessed such a gift for characterization and voice! I wish I had even a fraction of his stylistic dexterity! (Just a fraction! I'm not greedy!) Even at the most tragic moments, Waugh's wit (I can't help noting these observational zingers as evocative of Oscar Wilde at his best in The Picture of Dorian Gray) shines through. For example, when Lord Marchmain is dying, his mistress Cara says this of his condition: "His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word." (p. 288)

Rubric rating: 8.5. I need to read a few more titles by him before I definitively and officially induct him into the personal pantheon, but DAMN was he talented!

Apple in Alabama
I was going to buy this edition because I love the book,and the origional series with Anthony Andrews & Jeremy Irons. Now, I think maybe I'll skip it if the format sucks. Thanks 4 the heads up!

The first time I read Brideshead I thought it was only an alcholism story. Waugh did an incredible job of describing what it's like to love someone who is hooked on booze. Charles Ryder is best friends with Lord Sebastion Flyte, a golden young man who has everything but deststroys himself via the bottle. The scenes where Sebastion is happy and the scenes where he's drunk are intense and very realistic. The whole family is touched by his alcoholism and the whole family is hurt by it. Later Charles has a fairly dull romance with Sebastion's sister Julia but it serves to keep him involved in this intresting family so it's tolerable.

Later, when I grew up I realized that Brideshead is also about religion, duty, and England. Which ever angle you choose to "come at" Brideshead doesn't matter. Evelyn Waugh, for all his faults was a dazzling writer and this is an unforgettable tale.

The Flytes (Sebastian and Julia) take flight into alcohol and religion. Charles Rider, with nothing better to do, rides them both up and down. Ends up "homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless" but with the flame of Jesus in his heart. Evelyn Waugh was himself middle class and the product of a third-rate boarding school (Lancing) and second-rate Oxford college (Hertford), but he longed to be an English aristocrat, and the touching sincerity with which he conjures up that world and its values makes the novel the 20th century's premier document of British class neurosis. Waugh betrays himself and his background in his earnestness and the overwrought aesthetics in this novel. So many British reactionaries like Waugh were middle class and tormented by self-loathing, too supine to embrace reason, too infected by literary lechery, aesthetics and vanity to fully comprehend the sheer hollowness of their adopted worldview. No wonder, perhaps, that Britain has become a commercial and cultural mediocrity. Should be assigned as required reading in college courses on British decline, but not in the way Waugh intended. 2 1/2 stars but 3 for effort.

This is a fairly sizeable novel. It would normally take me about three days with pretty substantial reading time during those days. But there was just something about it, and I made time and read this one pretty much straight through. It is easily one of the most wonderful novels I have ever read.
There is so much to like about it. There is sheer joy in reading Waugh's prose as small nuggets of humor and beauty are uncovered throughout. The characters are pretty over-the-top (done on purpose) which makes them entertaining, but the depth of the characters is the truly striking thing. It's usually between the lines, but these characters are changing dramatically throughout, and for the better. I think the theological discussion running throughout the novel is what really makes it rise to true greatness. Waugh's making a compelling argument for a moral universe, and he is revealing what God's grace may look like working in people's lives.
Brideshead Revisited is true masterpiece that really cannot be missed by any lover of literature or by any person looking for some meaning out there. It's a joy in every sense of the word. This is one book I'm going to come back to.

Like most great novels, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is about a great many things--not the least of which is the decline of English aristocracy. But at center, Evelyn Waugh's greatest novel (and one of his few non-satirical works) is about religious faith, and how that faith continues to operate in the lives of even those who seem to reject it, and how that faith supports even those who falter badly in it.

The story is complex. It is told in the first person by narrator Charles Ryder, who develops a close and possibly homoerotic relationship with artistocrat Sebastian Flyte while the two are students at Oxford. Seduced by the glamor of Flyte's way of life and the beauty of his ancestrial home at Brideshead, Ryder becomes deeply involved with Flyte's family as well--a Roman Catholic family in which the various members either use their religion to manipulate others or actively rebel against it. With the passage of time, Sebastian's drinking expands into alcholism--which appears to be fueled by his guilt at rejecting the church, a rejection which may be based on his own uncertain sexuality. Ryder consequently transfers his affections to Sebastian's sister Julia--but again religion influences their relationship: Julia has made an unfortunate marriage, and although she is willing to engage in an affair with Ryder, she may not be willing to divorce her husband, an act that will cast her completely outside the bounds of her faith.

The characters involved in the story are often extremely charming, but they are not necessarily admirable, and the passage of time in the novel nibbles away at their charm in such a way as to expose their flaws; even the narrator, Charles Ryder, gradually emerges as a somewhat second-rate person of dubious integrity. Even so, there remains a strange element of hope in the novel, a sense of God's grace and mercy even in the face of deliberate affront. Poetically written with considerable beauty and a sense of lost innocence that haunts the reader, BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is a too-often misinterpreted and misunderstood book that demands a thoughtful reading to get down into the marrow of its thematic bones. Powerful, beautiful, memorable--a book to read and enjoy again and again. Strongly recommended.

GFT, the store Reviewer

What is the machinery of divine grace? For the characters of Brideshead Revisited, it is a fishing line:

"I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the line."

Beginning with a summertime outing in the English countryside, and ending in the darkness of World War II, BR attempts to trace the thread of grace as it leads Charles and the Brideshead family back to the heart of God. What exactly that means the reader will have to discern himself, but the result is a mixture of both the organic and the contrived. But what else would one expect from a divine plan?

Evelyn Waugh writes dialogue effortlessly; the characters of Sebastian, Brideshead, Edward Ryder, Julia, Lord Marchmain, Anthony Blanche--all of them speak with an ease that in part is due to their upperclass status but moreso to the skill of Waugh. His ear for voices is remarkable--I never read a line of dialogue that I didn't hear in my head with a distinct, vital voice.

If I chose to complain (which I have not), my only issue would be with the topic of divine grace. The few moments that struck me as false were a certain character's guilt-speech concerning the death of Christ, a later moment from the same character on the possibility of living outside of God's grace, and a specific scene of witnessing someone crossing himself which I will not further elaborate on, for the sake of spoilers. At these moments the machinery of grace showed itself, and by this I mean the machinery of the plot. It's the only time the characters seem to do unexpected and unaccountable things, and I felt the story suffered for it. Some will call it grace, and attribute these changes of character to divine power. I will call it Waugh.

Finally, Waugh's prose is at times ornamental, but in my estimation, always appropriate to the task and quite beautiful to boot. My favorite bit was Marchmain's monologue near the end, which is a gorgeous blend of prose and poetry. The potentially challenging aspects of this novel are its religious themes and its vocabulary. If one is familiar with British slang and idioms, this will likely pose no problem, but if you're a stranger to phrases like "come a cropper" and the like, you have been warned. What I found difficult was the usage of architectural terminology I was unfamiliar with. However, I am guessing Waugh uses a rather stock vocabulary of architectural terms, and I simply need to memorize them for future endeavors. Quibbles aside, I really can't recommend this one enough. Five stars.

Short & sweet because other reviewers have provided wonderful descriptions already: reading such a book as this is an education in itself.

Brideshead is a classic novel by a genuine master of English prose. Well-worth reading not once, but many times, to understand the depth of the story itself as well as appreciate Waugh's obvious mastery of language.

Also highly recommended is Mortimer's adaptation of the book as a mini-series starring Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons. It is the definitive Brideshead on film, from the opening lines spoken by Jeremy Irons (as usual, his speaking voice is flawless) to the final scene of Charles in Brideshead chapel during WWII where Charles prays "an ancient prayer, newly learned."

(There are some reviewers who've given it a low rating based on their dislike of the underlying theme of the book. Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and his novel revolves around the characters' wandering away but ultimately back again, to faith: for the Flyte family, it is a return to their heritage (two of the most moving scenes are Lord Marchmain's death-bed conversion and Julia's painful but utterly noble decision), and for Charles Ryder (not "Simon" as a one-star critic mistakenly called him! Have you read the book, sir?), it is a newly found conviction. Hence, Book III's title "A Twitch upon the Thread" (quoting Chesterton), the thread referring to the fine, but strong pull of the Catholic faith over these individuals. If this is the book's only 'flaw', as some assert it to be, perhaps this line from a Capra film will help: for those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, no explanation is possible. Agnostic, atheist or believer, the workings of grace is a mysterious thing.)

"My theme is memory..." An unforgetable cast of characters in a compelling story that's about....well, everything: love, war, family, architecture, Catholicism, homosexuality, wealth, poverty, alchoholism, college, painting, betrayal, time, distance, youthful exuberance, middle age melancholy, and the state of grace. In the rare company of Abraham Lincoln and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Waugh demonstrates the awesome but seldom seen beauty of the English language in an exquisite and bravura exposition of grammatical economy and poetic prose. Et in arcadia ego.

After an unpleasant chance first encounter, protagonist and narrator Charles Ryder, a student at an unnamed Oxford University college (though critics have suggested Waugh used Hertford College as his model; in the television series Charles Ryder wears a St Edmund Hall tie), and Lord Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of an aristocratic family and himself an undergraduate at Christ Church, become friends. Sebastian takes Charles to his family's palatial home, Brideshead Castle, where Charles eventually meets the rest of the Flyte family, including Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte.

During the holiday Charles returns home, where he lives with his father. Scenes between Charles and his father Ned (Edward) provide some of the best-known comic scenes in the novel. During the holiday he is called back to Brideshead after Sebastian incurs a minor injury. Sebastian and Charles spend the remainder of the summer together.

Sebastian's family is Catholic, but only first generation: Lord Marchmain, an Anglican, converted to his wife's religion, Roman Catholicism. Religious considerations arise frequently among the family, and Catholicism influences their lives as well as the content of their conversations, all of which surprises Charles, who had always assumed Christianity to be "without substance or merit." Charles is also put off religion by Lady Marchmain, Sebastian's mother, a devout Catholic who tries to control others through guilt and manipulation. Sebastian, in some ways a troubled young man, learns to find greater solace in alcohol than in religion, and descends into that habit, drifting away from the family over a two-year period, which occasions Charles' own estrangement from the Flytes. Yet Charles is fated to re-encounter the Flyte family over the years, and eventually forms a relationship with Julia, who by that time is married but separated from the wealthy but uncouth Canadian entrepreneur, Rex Mottram.

Charles plans to divorce his own wife -- who has been unfaithful -- so he and Julia can marry. However, motivated by a comment by her brother and by her father's deathbed return to the faith, Julia decides that she can no longer live in sin, and for that reason can no longer contemplate marriage to Charles. Lord Marchmain's reception of the sacrament of Extreme Unction also influences Charles, who had been "in search of love in those days" when he first met Sebastian, "that low door in the wall...which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden," a metaphor that informs the work on a number of levels.¹ Waugh desired that the book should be about the "operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters."

During the Second World War, Ryder, now an army officer after establishing a career as an architectural artist, is billeted at Brideshead, once home to many of his affections. It occurs to him that builders' efforts were not in vain, even when their purposes may appear, for a time, to be frustrated.

This is a wonderful, well-written book, about nostalgia for a time that was rapidly disappearing, thrust aside for a much more harsher and more modern existence.
The book itself is a beautiful edition, and a lovely experience to read.

I read "Brideshead Revisted" after I saw the PBS special back in 81. I was absolutley mesmerized when Jeremy Irons saw the grand house for the last time.The book was utterly fantastic but then I am a fan of English literature. One can surmise how religion especially the Catholic religion can become a choke hold in one's life and to challenge that choke hold would begin a lifetime of guilt and reqret.Waugh depicted these subjects in a most unusual prose. My life is completely different from the guilded manor houses of 1920's but When reading this great book, I find myself immerse into the Marchmain family problems with some understanding. Unusual indeed since I am from the back woods of Louisiana.

This was a very different reading experience and still making me ponder about it. Very complex book for sure, characters and events are described without much explaining and yet they speak clearly of the incongruous, ambiguous and often absurd lives of the British elite/wealthy family in between the wars. Also there is serious lamentation over the fragility of beauty and youth. "He was magically beautiful, with that epicene quality which is extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind." Writing is very sharp, and its humor painfully dark and analytical, particularly about the weight and irony of religious practice that seems to be right in the center of this story.

I won't touch on the actual book--ie its literary qualities--but instead want to state that this book was very poorly done for the Kindle. I don't know who's responsible, the publisher, who provided the book for use, or the store, who developed the format and probably the conversion software...Quotation marks were often half-done, so it seemed characters would start by making conversation and suddenly veer directly into narration. The word "I" was often replaced by the letter "T". Frequently, words were br k e n apart and/or missing letters. This technology has been available for two years now, so I should expect that the task of FORMATTING TEXT and CHECKING SPELLING would be under control by now. I've downloaded free old books from gutenberg.org and manybooks.net that didn't have this problem, so to find it in a major publishing house is rather irritating. The same problems recur in the other Waugh book, The Sword of Honour Trilogy...though it hasn't occurred in Waugh's Complete Short Stories, though I've read quite a few of them.

The DVD, novel and audiobook of Brideshead Revisited go together so beautifully--wow. If you haven't seen the miniseries, you are in for a treat--buy or rent the DVD. Once you've seen the miniseries and read the book, it is wonderful to get the chance to hear Jeremy Irons read it. Irons is the central character and narrator of the film, so he is a natural choice to do the narration. He may be the best reader in English on the planet! Highly recommended.

Brideshead Revisited is in many ways an anomalous work in the oeuvre of Evelyn Waugh. Better known for his scathingly funny satires, Waugh, in writing this novel, turned his freewheeling wit and awe-inspiring command of the English language toward writing what is perhaps his most serious work. The book is nonetheless, in many places, hilarious--but more so, from start to finish, Brideshead Revisited is charming, convincing, and infinitely compelling in providing a timeless panorama of English youth and high society whose power and beauty transcends all cultural barriers.

I've heard all the criticisms of this book--I've heard Martin Amis accuse it of snobbery for its defense of English nobility; George Orwell ridicule the conservative sentiments of Waugh that sometimes seep into the novel; and many a critic denounce the novel's attempts to unite the story with theology as a failure. But none of that matters to me, because Brideshead Revisited was one of the few books I've read that I sincerely regretted finishing, for the sole reason that I'd rarely read a book that so thoroughly engrossed, entertained, and enlightened me.

Well nigh all of the characters, minor and major alike, attract the reader's unwavering interest, often accompanied by a strong sense of sympathy, scorn, or even both. The book centers on the relationship of the protagonist, Charles Ryder, with the entire Flyte family, an aristocratic clan of Catholics who fascinate Ryder. Without giving away too many specifics, Brideshead Revisited, before its duration is spent, will relate one of the most authentic accounts of male friendship in literature, as well as what is, in my view, one of few literary love affairs whose ultimate success I found myself passionately rooting for all the way. From the witty and eminently likable Sebastian, to the sometimes endearingly maladroit Bridey, to the tragic Lady Marchmain, to the radiant and resolute Julia, the Flytes are one of the best-developed and most intriguing families you'll ever read about. As their stories, and Charles', unfold and interwine, the novel marches toward its inevitable and all-too-human conclusion, while drawing the reader closer and closer with every turn of the page--with some help from a stellar supporting cast.

Perhaps the aspect of the book that fascinates me the most is, although all of the characters an events therein are figments of Waugh's imagination, one gets the irrepressible sense that the story could have played out no other way. The novel, of course, is rife with Waugh's choice themes and motifs--but to me those, and their alleged flaws, are all secondary concerns, because Brideshead Revisited is masterly storytelling at its pinnacle.

...boring with uninteresting characters.

I simply have no motivation to continue reading (@ 1/3) the way through. -except that I spent $3.- for the download.....
but, continuing would only add to my first mistake in buying it to begin with.

2 stars because one I reserve for repugnant material/authors.

This is an interesting and at times an entertaining novel of 1900s England. It appears to be somewhat autobiographical. The plot line centers around an aristocratic Catholic family in England. The readers follow the interactions of the narrator with Sebastian Flyte, his sister Julia Flyte, and others. A significant sub-plot is the struggles of flawed humans in various stages of faith. It is a very subtle presentation of the Catholic faith and just belief in God in general. This may not be for everyone, but fans of modern English literature will most likely enjoy it.

As other reviewers have already mentioned, this book operates at a few different levels. Ultimately it's a spiritual journey. Evelyn Waugh's writing is sublime. I've read this book many times and am now at the point of reading it to just savor Waugh's gorgeous prose. Can't wait for it to come out in Kindle!

This book is worth a read for one reason: Waugh skillfully portrays the dysfunctions and excesses of aristocratic British life. The evident futility of their lives is very poignantly expressed - Waugh's literary style seems to just ooze 'futility' and a sense of 'an end of an era'.
That being said, I did not find the prose very fluid (hence the 4 stars instead of 5). I also do not generally like books where I'm left with a sense of loss and hopelessness. However, if you do like those types of books, then Waugh's poignancy is definitely not to be missed.

I very much wanted to like this book, but didn't. Waugh is one of a group of conservative, mostly-Catholic, British writers (Anthony Powell, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene) who have defied the conventional wisdom of the time they wrote & have outlasted the much more numerous contemporary writers of the Left. And I loved his book Scoop.
Brideshead tells the story of Charles Ryder and his infatuation with the dysfunctional, upperclass, Roman Catholic, Marchmain Family in the years between the Wars. The characters are too effete and indolent to sustain our interest, until the rather more interesting conclusion--wherein most of the Marchmain clan have their own religious epiphanies--which nearly redeems the book. I'd call this one a near miss, but better than most.
GRADE: C

I listened to the audio of this book after having seen the PBS mini-series years ago and I was amazed to find that the principal characters, by my standards, were dispicable. Charles Ryder, in particular, sent me off when he returned from the jungle and described his relationship with his wife and children (one of whom he had never met and whom he showed no interest in meeting). Through these eyes, I re-viewed Julia and her father and found them both contemptible. Although the era was full of elegance and physical beauty, it is not hard to understand its decline in the hands of such morally bankrupt characters.

Set in England during the reigns of George V, Edward VIII and George VI, Evelyn Waugh explores in this novel, the varying degrees of spirituality of members of the Marchmain family and the relationships that exists between them and others who share their lives. Some family members weigh desires and progressive attitudes against social and religious convention and find the latter lacking, while others cling to old religious and social practices and seek to continue to enjoy the opulence of a soon to be, bygone era.
Waugh documents the excesses and eventual downfall of the youngest son Sebastian, whose burden it is to confront his disillusionment with his faith, with his morally incorruptible mother. Lady Marchmain's control over her children using her charm, piety and the religious doctrine she devoutly observes is unquestionable. Each member of her family is affected to varying degrees, including the absent husband.
The novel's narrator and protagonist Charles Ryder, is a self-confessed agnostic and friend of Sebastian. The story commences with Charles, who, at a low ebb in his life, is commissioned to command an infantry regiment during World War II and is despatched by train to an unknown location. His sullen mood determines that he neither feels the need to know his destination nor does he particularly care. Upon alighting the train to make camp Charles discovers he is within sight of Brideshead, the castle that was the Marchmain ancestral home and location of much happiness for him twenty years earlier. Charles recalls that precious time and relates the story with a deep sense of nostalgia and recognition that those languid days of love and abundance are gone forever.
Lady Marchmain commands abidance to Catholicism 'in a voice as quiet as a prayer and as powerful' from four very different children. The elder son, Brideshead is pious and conservative, unamusing and annoyingly narrow-minded. Julia is a contemporary woman, smart and very beautiful. She agonises over her marriage to a 'colonial' who doesn't understand centuries of observance to certain social protocol and devotion to a church, which he considers encourages the perpetuation of guilt for its own purposes. As Julia's angst is disclosed she is portrayed as a complex young woman who must reject her faith to marry. She eventually finds herself disappointed with her choices and is left wondering how life could have gone so awry.
Sebastian is 'the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which is arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seem to know no bounds'. Sebastian's charm captivates Charles from the first moment he sees him. They become inseparable and live life at Oxford to the full, however Charles eventually realises that Sebastian drinks to escape, rather than 'through an excess of high spirits, in the love of the moment and with the wish to prolong and enhance it'. Charles must eventually come to the conclusion that he has 'lost' his perpetually sullen friend.
Cordelia is the youngest of the Marchmain children. She is too young and devout of faith to fully understand her brother's dilemma, however she loves him unconditionally. Cordelia also seems too young to be aware of her mother's need to control, yet after Lady Marchmain dies, Cordelia confides to Charles that her mother 'was saintly but she wasn't a saint' and that 'when people wanted to hate God, they hated mummy'. There is a resigned acceptance at her inability to love her mother and of the lapse of faith of her father, sister and beloved brother.
Sebastian's deep depression and inner battle to reconcile his beliefs with his mother's expectations of him, are exemplified by Charles' responses in the conversation that he and Sebastian shared 'in the collonade with the papers'. Sebastian would not find true solace in his relationship with Charles because he perceived that Charles could not grasp the gravity of his dilemma, despite their mutual love. Waugh's decision to portray Charles as irreligious adds depth to Sebastian's dilemma. The reader is left with the distinct feeling that love does not 'conquer all' and that the chasm between being unaffected by religion and the need to be devout of faith is too wide to bridge for these two introspective young men. The book's most amusing dialogue occurs when Sebastian, unable or not wishing to try to defend his faith, exclaims 'Oh don't be a bore, Charles. I want to read about a woman in Hull who's been using an instrument'.
Lady Marchmain attempts to solicit Charles `to her side' in order that he assist her to deny Sebastian the alcohol he increasingly relies upon. Initially charmed by her, Charles eventually recognises her ploy and rather than winning his confidence, Lady Marchmain's emotional blackmail succeeds in `closing the low door in the wall' and Charles is destined to no longer meet Sebastian in their `enchanted garden'.
Charles loses contact with the Marchmains until many years later when he and Julia are literally thrown together on a ship in a storm. It is a fitting climax to Charles' involvement with the Marchmain family that he and Julia should become lovers. The raging storm could be perceived to be a metaphor for the consummation of their relationship and that in itself to some degree, closure to Charles' lost love for Sebastian.
Presumably Evelyn Waugh sought to mourn the passing of an era and to celebrate his 1930 conversion to Roman Catholicism. In doing so he created an extraordinarily splendid tale. The novel may be excused for glorifying the aristocracy, because it transports the reader to 'that enchanted garden' which is full of life's glorious excesses. It is tragic to lose an enchanting, teddy toting, young man to the bottle and it is sad to see love lost on a technicality but it is comforting to watch Waugh's characters rediscover their faith despite sinking to desolation and despair before doing so. Brideshead Revisited is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read and I have no doubt I shall read it again.

I happen to love English literature (serious and not-so) from the early part of the twentieth century. This book is both wonderful and horrible--it won't be for everyone, but those in sympathy with the period will not feel they have wasted their time reading it.

There is no question the first part of the book--the Oxford days--is its strongest, most cohesive part. The later sections lose that early, sharp focus.

The prose is truly a thing of beauty--as smooth and silky as foie gras or Belgian chocolate. It makes one long for the days when it wasn't necessary to explain that true martinis are made with gin. But as I turned over the last pages, I realized I despised almost every character in the book--especially those with whom I am sure I was supposed to feel sympathy. I found the narrator to be little more than a crashing snob, although that isn't always a hindrance toward my love for a character. Indeed, the only character I really liked was Anthony Blanche--who was disliked by most of the others, but who was the most insightful and least delusional. Some of the even-more-minor characters are unobjectionable, but that, after all, is damning with faint

praise. In spite of that, I am glad I read it and shall probably re-read it every few years.

A must-read for any true Anglophile, but not without its flaws.

Brideshead Revisited is an eloquently written book, visiting themes such as religion, beauty and the `languor of youth'.
I've read it three times over and it never fails to capture my imagination about the splendours of the recent past, aristocratic life and picturesque settings.
Its theme is memory infused with the venomous-pleasures of love and beauty. It narrates a succession of relationships nourished by charm and an eternal search for one's being. It's a tale about illusions, despair, hope, faith, expectations and finally about the voyage in life... a voyage often dotted by encounters with beautiful people.

A novel of remarkable depth and wistfulness tied to sometimes outrageous humour and a whiff of satire -- truly a delicate balancing act, and here carried off with panache. 'Brideshead Revisited' is a riveting, immersive novel that will carry you to a nostalgic yesteryear of the British aristocracy, complete with all its hidden warts and lesions. A short but lovely read.

I know if I had read this in my youth, I would never have appreciated Waugh's exquisite writing nor the symbolism throughout the book which would have been lost on me. This is another book that should be read, at least in my opinion, later in life.

Of course, Irons played Charles Ryder in the now-classic 1982 television miniseries of "Brideshead." If you admired that, you must hear his performance of Waugh's unabridged text on this recording. I listen to it every fall when the leaves are changing, just to revel in the language, appreciate a great acting performance, and to have my faith renewed. When you listen to this, you will feel the "twitch upon the thread."

The seduction of well-written prose and our voyeurism into the lives of old British nobility--all here. But with an edge since Waugh is also chronicling its decay. Have read this twice for how it's written.

The purchase of Brideshead Revisited is one of sure investments in your library. You will revisit it very often because it is one of the books that keep you in their thrall forever. Actually, I have a copy in my desk in the office and pick it up to read a few pages when my students are late for meeting.
This is a book which can be read in many ways - most of which open up a new perspective on its contents and some of which may help you understand yourself and those you choose to share it with. It may be read as a Christian treatise (Waugh took this quite seriously) and a memoir of studies at Oxford in the 1920s. A story of a misplaced homosexual affection and story of decline of British aristocracy. Whichever way you choose you will not be disappointed.

Published in 1945, this novel, which Waugh himself sometimes referred to as his "magnum opus," was originally entitled "Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder." The subtitle is important, as it casts light on the themes--the sacred grace and love from God, especially as interpreted by the Catholic church, vs. the secular or profane love as seen in sex and romantic relationships. The tension between these two views of love--and the concept of "sin"--underlie all the action which takes place during the twenty years of the novel and its flashbacks.

When the novel opens at the end of World War II, Capt. Charles Ryder and his troops, looking for a billet, have just arrived at Brideshead, the now-dilapidated family castle belonging to Lord Marchmain, a place where Charles Ryder stayed for an extended period just after World War I, the home of his best friend from Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte. The story of his relationship with Sebastian, a man who has rejected the Catholicism imposed on him by his devout mother, occupies the first part of the book. Sebastian, an odd person who carries his teddy bear Aloysius everywhere he goes, tries to escape his upbringing and religious obligations through alcohol. Charles feels responsible for Sebastian's welfare, and though there is no mention of any homosexual relationship, Charles does say that it is this relationship which first teaches him about the depths of love.

The second part begins when Charles separates from the Flytes and his own family and goes to Paris to study painting. An architectural painter, Charles marries and has a family over the next years. A chance meeting on shipboard with Julia, Sebastian's married sister, brings him back into the circle of the Flyte family with all their religious challenges. Three of the four Flyte children have tried to escape their religious backgrounds, and this part of the novel traces the extent to which they have or have not succeeded in finding peace in the secular world. "No one is ever holy without suffering," he believes.

Dealing with religious and secular love, Heaven and Hell, the concepts of sin and judgment, and the guilt and punishments one imposes on oneself, the novel also illustrates the changes in British society after World War II. The role of the aristocracy is less important, the middle class is rising, and in the aftermath of war, all are searching for values. A full novel with characters who actively search for philosophical or religious meaning while they also search for romantic love, Brideshead Revisited is complex and thoughtfully constructed, an intellectual novel filled with personal and family tragedies--and, some would say, their triumphs. n Mary Whipple

The quintesssential story of the years between the wars, full of rich detail, emotional understatement, a terrific story, a bitter-sweet romance.
I'm a writer myself, and I copy memorable bits of the writing of others (especially classic authors) into journals. I listened to this book while driving CA Route 1 along the coast and kept having to pull into a turnout to write stuff down. After that trip, I bought a small purse-sized tape recorder!
This book is lush and gorgeous, like a bouquet of orchids.

Often considered Waugh's 'magnum opus,' this novel of epic proportions follows the conflicted Charles Ryder through his involvement with the enchanting Flyte family. After befriending Sebastian Flyte at Oxford, Charles is gradually introduced to his sisters, Julia and Cordelia; his stolid brother, Brideshead; his estranged father, Lord Marchmain; his pious mother, Lady Marchmain; and, most importantly, Brideshead, their grand estate. Over the course of the story, Charles faces varying degrees of propinquity to each member of the family as he becomes a member of the family himself. Through these relationships, he is forced to make choices concerning love, his future, and religion.

Almost a character within itself, the topic of religion is constant throughout the novel. The Flyte family's Catholicism, we come to find, is of differing importance to each family member. Charles, however, never quite comes to terms with it, resulting in an inveterate rift between the family and him.

I only assign four stars to the novel due to its prolonged nature, even at points of the story that have no consequence to Charles' self-discovery, most particularly the scene in which Charles and Sebastian are thrown in jail.

This is an unforgettable portrait of England's decline and fall, as embodied in the story of one aristocratic Catholic family -- with a flicker of transcendent hope at the end. A rewarding way to spend 11 hours of commuting time, if you listen to the audio version.

Evelyn Waugh's book "Brideshead Revisited" gives you that feeling of autumnal-university-literature-class heaviness that you crave from time to time. Like that piece of chocolate cake that you shyed away from the other day, it's something that is too dense and too heavy for you to eat hurriedly but something that you want to sit and take time with.

There are all of the usual literary forms in this book which employs memories of Post-WWI modernist progressivism framed by the mires of WWII meaninglessness. But Waugh isn't doing this simply for the want of honor and tradition that seem to have been lost to progress and get-'er-done type flunkies, he's (and yes, he is a "HE") doing it for your soul.

Evelyn Waugh was an adult convert to Roman Catholicism, and you can trace both his faith as well the memories of his wrestling against faith in this book. The book uses the protagonist of Charles Ryder to explore the lives and existential nature of the family that resides in the Brideshead mansion. It is a look into human nature as it wrestles with all sorts of things, and especially as it wrestles with faith.

The book is one of the many that are lumped into the "hound of heaven" category. Over and over in the book, we see that no matter how far astray or how morally and ethically objectionable people are - God's grace seeks after them and brings them back with a twitch upon the thread that connects them to God.

Although the book isn't overtly Christian, the Christian reader can certainly enjoy a deeper level of significance. The non-Christian can also enjoy the book, especially the look into the Christian life that shows that even Christians aren't ever perfect, nor do they need to be - they know a hound of heaven who is.

Like all American editions, this new edition by Back Bay Books uses the original 1945 version of the book. Waugh reissued it in 1959 "with many small additions and some substantial cuts", so that all later UK editions, including Penguin and Everyman's Library, used the new revised version. Only the American publisher continued to use the old one. There is a disagreement between Waugh's readers about whether the altered text was an improvement. Frank Kermode in his preface to the Everyman's edition argues that "the final version of the novel is preferable". So if you're a fan of the book you might be interested in reading both and making your own judgment.

This book stunned me when I reached the end. Throughout, I enjoyed reading about the various characters and the British ambience, and I didn't expect the very moving way in which the main characters ultimately developed. In addition to telling a good story and depicting a beautiful world, the author made some very profound statements about religion and character. It is a book that I will enjoy reading again.

Okay, maybe 'blunders' is a harsh word. How about 'misfires'? That's probably more accurate.
I am not nearly qualified to give Evelyn Waugh advice on how to write. But I will anyway: Please, Mr. Waugh, stick to cute satire, and leave the romance fiction to the less acute; make the books more mordant than maudlin; model "The Loved One", which was far better than this tale of loved ones.
My main complaint is that Waugh here comes off as little more than a poor man's Oscar Wilde. You have a proliferation of aesthete's epigrams ("Oh, Charles, don't be such a tourist. What does it matter when it was built, if it's pretty?"), the crypto-homoeroticism (actually, it's not that well hidden at all), and various variations on Dorian Gray's syndrome. But where Wilde's writing revels in its formulas and in it's decadence, Waugh doesn't appear to be having very much fun.
The first half begins well enough. Charles Ryder, a cipheric army captain, happens on Brideshead Castle after a lengthy absence. It, and its occupants, defined his youth, and the sight of it forces forward a flood of memories. The remainder of the novel takes place within these memories, Ryder mainly acting as observer of those around him. He is a fine narrator, allowing equal time to the objective and subjective aspects of his memory (i.e., the events as they happened vs. his reactions to said events).
While at Oxford, his chief subject is Sebastian Flyte, a charming dipsomaniac. Sebastian is Charles' best and only friend, while being his 'in' to Brideshead. He's an addictively self-destructive character, still in love with his childhood (a teddy-bear named Aloysius goes with him everywhere; he adores his old nanny), which eventually leads to his own undoing. It's typical of the novel that when Sebastian's immature drunkenness rears its ugly head, one of his school chums casually remarks: "How boring!" Charles' days at Oxford are the novel's high points, as the charming and intriguing people he meets form a peculiar tapestry. It was a true pleasure to read the first hundred or so pages, as Waugh appears on top of his game.
Unfortunately, Oxford days are abandoned in the novel's second half, and the narrative flounders under the weight of 'big ideas'. While the residents of Brideshead are no less fascinating than the Oxford boys (as Sebastian accurately says: "I'm not going to have you [Charles] get mixed up with my family. They're so madly charming."), the harsh melodrama that ensues got on my nerves. And, ultimately, Waugh never gives his characters anything cohesive to do; episodes drag on much too long, wearing out their welcome long after any relevant point has been made. Take his treatment of Lady Marchmain, Brideshead's matriarch, and a devout Catholic. A side comment by (her daughter) Cordelia epitomizes her mother's character:
"I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy... She was saintly but she wasn't a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to hate Him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it's God and hate that."
Out of the mouths of babes, no? Cordelia (read: Waugh) crystallizes in that one speech all the problems that religion has brought to the novel's second half. It's typical of the kind of sharp writing Waugh excels at. But the effect is diluted when the argument is repeated, in various forms, ad nauseam. It got to be quite tedious.
Charles, at one point, pledges to only live in a world of three-dimensions, that he can experience with his five senses. He soon he finds out that artifice rules the day, especially at Brideshead Castle, and such a world doesn't exist. I'd expected Waugh to pounce all over this idea with his sharp pen and sharper mind. But instead he revels in Charles' overwrought sincerity. Waugh's pointed wit usually punctures holes in stuffy characters such as these, but here he is content to just create them.
While in arcadian Oxford, "Brideshead Revisited" shines, enough that I can offer a marginal recommendation. Once it leaves that idyllic setting, Waugh gets rusty.

I can't read this book without remembering that it was written during the war, at a time when it really did look like the world might end at any moment. Waugh must have felt that he had to work it all out on paper, Catholic v. Protestant, homosexual v. heterosexual, sinner v. saint. This book is incredibly beautiful in passages, tragically bleak in others. You won't easily forget it.

This is a story of an aristocratic, very Catholic family in Protestant England, and of the narrator, a well to do friend of the family who we meet as he enters Oxford, and leave as a middle aged establishment artist. It is a novel of character, but also of class, religion, and beauty. It is beautifully written, and is moving, sad and sometimes funny. Part of the genius of this novel is that not only do the characters evolve, but your understanding deepens, so that there is a cumulative impact. It is a book in which you cannot always take what the characters, including the narrator, say at face value, not because they are dissimulating, but because they don't have complete insight into themselves. Extending this idea, I would suggest that Catholicism is not quite as dominant an influence as the book seems to suggest, and that disfunctional parenting plays a major role that the narrator (not to be confused with Waugh) is not sufficiently developed as a human being to appreciate.

BRIDESHEAD REVISTED begins with a friendship that Charles Ryder, this novel's snobbish protagonist, establishes with Sebastian Flyte, the son of a wealthy Catholic family and the owners of Brideshead, a beautiful country estate. This friendship begins when Ryder is a fresher at Oxford:

"I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting..." And: "He was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love..."

Between their first and second years at Oxford, Charles accompanies Sebastian to Venice, where they stay with Sebastian's father and his mistress. She observes: "I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans.... I think they are very good if they do not go on too long... In England it comes when you are almost men; I think I like that. It is better to have that kind of love for another boy than for a girl. Alex [Sebastian's father], you see, had it for a girl, for his wife..."

To the contemporary sensibility, Waugh begins BR by establishing a gay relationship between Charles and Sebastian. But then what happens? Instead of keeping his focus on this issue, Waugh expands the interests of the haughty Charles from Sebastian to the entire Flyte/Marchmain family, their old money heritage, and his sister Julia, who must find a suitable husband.

Meanwhile, Waugh appends to Sebastian the problem of alcoholism. This certainly gives Waugh something to write about. But, as presented, this problem doesn't really explore Sebastian's character. Instead, it allows Waugh to follow Sebastian's plight over 20 years while downplaying his sexual orientation. BR, in other words, seems to address manufactured, not character-driven, themes. It lacks the courage to explore its content.

This failure to confront content is also apparent in Waugh's treatment of Sebastian's family. Here, the pompous Charles believes that the Flyte/Marchmain family represents something great and discerning, as well as superior to commercial work-a-day England. Illustrating this are Charles's observations about Lady Marchmain's brothers, who died in World War I. "These men must die to make a world for Hooper [a feckless enlisted man reporting to Charles in the prologue and epilogue]; they were the aborigines, vermin by right of law, to be shot off at leisure so that things might be safe for the traveling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat wet handshake, his grinning dentures."

But, in fact, the men of the wealthy Flyte/Marchmain clan are simply spoiled and useless twits, uninterested in finding meaningful roles in life. At the same time, the issue in the life of Julia is the standard female problem of finding the right man. What Waugh tries to do in BR is to endow these very limited characters with historic dimension. But, the only quality about this family that is other than mediocre is its wealth. IMO, Waugh, through his protagonist Charles, can't see the true dynamic of his characters because he is a captivated by their money. Again, he doesn't truly confront his content.

Certainly, Catholicism plays a big role in Book III of BR. But you know what? Once again, this subject feels like something Waugh appended to his narrative so there was something to write about. Will Lord Marchmain accept the sacrament on his death bed? Will Julia acknowledge her core Catholicism? These are matters that come up in the conclusion of BR. But these aren't emblematic of issues that Waugh has explored throughout his novel. Instead, Catholicism functions as a layer of melodrama that Waugh has added to a bizarre book, where the emotional engine of the narrative diverts from its story.

I have read Brideshead Revisited two or three times; I saw the PBS serial a couple of times,but I never tire of the fine art of Evelyn Waugh in describing the characters in this novel. Perhaps there are no heroes, but we sympathize with the protagonists Charles Ryder and Julia Marchmain in their struggle to find happines, if not together, then at least on their own. Julia is aristocratic and rich, Charles a talented artist. Charles is an unbeliever and scoffs at the religion of the Marchmain family. In the end, Julia who had lost her faith for a time, finds her faith again and Charles discovers happiness in becoming a believer. The patient reader will find much to like in the spare but beautiful prose of Waugh.

The melancholic mood of the book makes it perfect ot be read under the shadow of a tree or on dark rainy afternoons. The dissapearence of a time, of a family, a class, and a love is perfectly mixed in the same story. But to feel it the book shall be read according to its inner pace. If you read it all in one night somehow you will lose part of its beauty. Also you shall not read this book if you are looking for action and fun.

As someone very interested in the field of Queer Theory, I was pleasantly surprised to pick up this book and discover such fascinating love relationships in the life of Charlie Ryder. Set between the two World Wars, Brideshead Revisited follows the life of Charlie Ryder and his dealings (and romances) with members of the Flyte family. Waugh has both a beautiful way with words and a scathing, satirical wit. He seems to revere and scorn the British aristocracy. Charlie is in love with the beautiful but highly eccentric/flamboyant Sebastian, and later moves on to the sister who bears an uncanny resemblance to her brother. Though I have never heard the book mentioned in a Queer Theory course, it would certainly be a fitting novel in which to apply ideas of queer performativity etc.
Through this book, I have become a big fan of Waugh and look forward to reading more of his many works.
For those interested in visual representations of classic novels, there is also a miniseries (available on Netflix) of the same title which actually got the book re-recognized in the early 1980s. It is quite good--Jeremy Irons plays Charlie Ryder in his first screen role ever.

I first read this book over 30 years ago but wanted to return to it because of the quality of Evelyn Waugh's writing. There is enough detail to get a clear picture of each character, scene and location but it still moves along well and keeps ones interest page to page. I will always remember the prayer, "O God, if there is a God, forgive this man his sins, if there is such a thing as sin."
I have used that many times with friends and co-workers since it covers a wealth of beliefs or un-beliefs. I highly recommend this work.

Brideshead Revisited in one of those masterpieces that your find you love more each time you re-read it. It's funny, sad, serious and poignant. It shows the power and the weakness of religion. Waugh's characters are vivid and his language and imagery is masterful.

Waugh's grand coming of age novel. He leaves satire behind in this narrative story told mostly through a flashback. The narrator recounts his time at Oxford when he befriends the aristocratic Flyte family and the subsequent years as he as his troubled friend grow apart. Beautifully written.

ONe of the finest novels written in the English Language. Waugh transports you to the world of Brideshead. I was constantly startled to look up and find myself in 2010. Impeccable language and masterful storytelling are just some of the hallmarks of this treasure. I will read it again and again.

Waugh's technique as a noncomic prose stylist can be summarized as follows: adopt an unhappy view of the world and describe it with strange nouns. Fine as this book undoubtedly is, that does not make for timeless writing. What you have in Brideshead Revisited is an advanced lexicon made to seem grave and thoughtful by the unreasonably harsh view its characters take of luxury. I am not here to denounce the rich and I'm sympathetic to the kind of love described in this book. I think, however, that I was bored by the 450th word for flower turned out by the end of Book One. This seems quibbling but God must be in the details, and I think the incompleteness sensed by other reviewers on this site is a result of Waugh's preference for unusual words over unusual meaning.

Although Brideshead Revisted starts out a little dry, this novel's beautiful language and syntax will definitely keep the book in your hands. The story is about a young man, Charles Ryder, and his relationships with the Flyte family. Sebastian Flyte, the younger brother, is Charles' best friend throughout his college days. Sebastian has a whole family full of characters that challenge Charles to re-evaluate his opinions on everything from religion to relationships. I don't think my words can do justice, though, to the words of Evelyn Waugh, his writing is masterful, and I believe you will thoroughly enjoy reading this book.

Brideshead revisited is funny, it's characters are charming and intriguing, and the love story is so real it hurts. I've recommended this book to everyone I know and am getting ready to read it again. I could not put it down! I haven't read anything else by E.W. yet, but if this book is any indication, he may become my favorite author.

The first two thirds of this novel are almost unmatched in Post-War British Literature: witty, insightful, acidly satirical, and, in their own way, powerful. The sense of character and place is especially vivid, and personal and social tensions are brilliantly entwined.

The last third is marred by a love interest that is anemic and thoroughly unconvincing. Here the characters and imagery lapse into caricature. Julia's climactic sacrifice is ludicrous, as is a long (and infamous) stream of purple prose.

Waugh sought to dramatize the tension between the Sacred and the Profane. But if the Sacred is upheld by a trinity of nostalgia, sentimentality, and reflexive Catholic guilt, lord help us all. Ryder's "epiphany" is as much a shallow pantomime as his faux-naturalist paintings.

The scene in which the "hero" and his aristocratic friends brutalize striking workers for a lark, is one of the most repulsive in all literature.

There is little new to say of this book other than to mention what an excellent light it sheds on Waugh's other, very different books. Although dismissed by Waugh as the product of Spam and blackouts (wartime privations), Brideshead endures because of its superb structure, characterizations and ultimately heart. It is this last feature which gives evidence of the human depths that inform all of Waugh's novels even those whose satire keeps these depths at a clinical distance.

With a twitch upon the thread, I'm brought back time and time again to this wonderful book. In a relatively short set of pages, Waugh explores the world of art, catholicism, and love (both homosexual and heterosexual) and does so with some of the most perfectly crafted and beautiful sentences of English prose.

This is the most beautiful book I've ever read! Esp part one, which is like a revisiting of Gatsby's mansion without the roughness of the American wealth. The only thing I've read from this period that can compare is Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. You can't read it for the plot, but the beauty of the language, the detail, and the simple yearning of a Waugh soul searching in WWII is wonderful

Typically when I finish a book, my wife jumps at the chance to read it next after having seen my excitement. When I finished Brideshead Revisited, she declined the offer. She said it was a boring title with a boring cover, and that I hadn't said anything at all to make her think it was a good read. Yet Brideshead Revisited is extremely well written. When it came time for me to write a review of my own performance at work, I tried to find inspiration from Waugh's style; I showed the review to my wife, who was blown away by how well it was written. So where is the disconnect?
Perhaps it stems from the fact that there is no real story line. What is Brideshead Revisited about? I can tell you that it touches on religion and war and homosexuality and class and family, but I am hard pressed to provide a synopsis. (I finally concluded that it is a family portrait, which is what adorns the cover of my edition.) More likely my dissatisfaction is a result of the dispassionate voice of the main character/narrator that gives the story a dream-like quality similar to L'Etranger by Camus. If the narrator himself is dispassionate, that makes it tough for me to get wrapped up in the novel.
I fear that criticizing a modern classic speaks more to my own unsophisticated tastes than to the strengths or weaknesses of the novel, so it is it is with some trepidation that I give Brideshead Revisited only three stars. The book sat on my shelf for over a decade before I finally picked it up. What took me so long? Perhaps it's as simple as it being a boring title with a boring cover. All I can say is that it wasn't worth the wait.

There were many things in this book I just plain missed. I will admit my mediocre review has something to do with my ignorance of the subject and inability to follow at times. It seems that other reviewers are Waugh fans, which may have made this book more enjoyable. What I'm trying to say with this review is that if you are a Waugh fan, I think you will thoroughly enjoy this book as it sounds like it is a refreshing change of pace. If you are not a Waugh fan, make sure you have a resource (friend who has read it or Cliff's notes) that can help you along the way.

It is the story of a young man who falls into a peculiar relationship with another man while at college. They have a strong, deep connection, and Charles (narrator) begins to feel part of Sebastian's family, which is exactly what Sebastian didn't want. Eventually, Sebastian disappears and Charles loses touch with the family. I found part two of the book more enjoyable as it talks about Charles' painting career and his relationship with Julia, Sebastian's sister.

I felt that the writing was wonderful at times, but dragged on quite a bit and spoke around things so much it was difficult to understand what was going on. Which is why I'm guessing it may be helpful to have read other things by Waugh before. I didn't find the characters particularly engaging. Nor did I find the discussion of religion particularly enlightening or thoughtful. It was a fairly interesting read, but after I finished I was left wondering what I really got out of the book and I was left with very little.

Not sure how can anyone rate this book less than 5 stars. You have to read it several times too and you will discover each time you will discover something new and thus further expands your understanding of it. A good companion for this move is the BBC series below. Don't watch the remake. To call the remake crap is to give it too much credit!

Brideshead Revisited (25th Anniversary Collector's Edition)

Classic English Historical Fiction. A glimpse into the eccentricities of the former English aristocratic lives. See the PBS mini series too, but the movie currently out doesn't do the book justice like the mini-series.

I will never understand how some of these awful books stay in circulation for so long. There wasn't one character in this novel that deserved any sympathy or stirred one ounce of human compassion. I know this was Mr. Waugh's tribute to a bygone era, but it was a chore to even finish reading it.

Waugh's prose is a joy to read but the story itself is dissatisfying. The book begins with an intensely close relationship between the narrator and Sebastian Flyte, and for starters, Sebastian is neither interesting nor likeable. And as much as we are told of the intensity of the friendship and love between these two, it's really something the reader has to accept at face value. It's not "powerful," despite several gushing reviews to that effect. Sebastian later becomes an alcoholic, exits the stage for points east, and there never is much of a sense of closure with him. Instead, his sister Julia, a minor character in the early chapters, becomes the love interest, while the most (only?) interesting, intelligent, independent and funny character, Anthony Blanche, flits in and out of the plot at odd intervals. In all, Brideshead Revisited is a stuffy soap opera about a pious upperclass British family, and as such it epitomizes Mark Twain's description of classic literature: a book everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read.

I thought the reading was a bit difficult at first but then I got into the plot and the characters. I completely fell in love with Sebastien's character and the new movie that's out is was just the icing on the cake for this book.

i got this book thinking it would be geniously acidic and sarcastic like waugh's other novels. i suppose, leaving my preference for waugh's usual style aside, that this book is alright. just. the story was bland, i kept waiting for something interesting to happen, and it never showed up. the main character constantly left me rolling my eyes at him. actually, everyone in the book did, besides the younger sister. she was a lovely smarta**. but i'm rambling. my point is that if you want something acidic and wickedly funny, go for the loved one or a handful of dust. just admire the gorgeous cover art in the bookstore and then reach for another one of waugh's books.

Contrary to what is stated by the previous reviewer, the characters in Brideshead Revisited redeem themselves by the end of the book. That is one of the most moving parts about it, to see how persons who have squandered their lives can turn things around and do good. If one reads the entire unabridged book to the end, it should be clear.

Anyone considering a purchase of this product should know that it is very heavily abridged. It's difficult to give a realistic assessment of how much has been lost, but to me it sounds as though about half of Waugh's writing has been cut out. Most of the dialogue is there, but the narratives have been omitted. Whole characters, such as Hooper and Charles Ryder's father, have been truncated, leaving the book really an empty shell.

I was really disappointed by this product: Nowhere on the CD itself does it say "Abridged," nor is it obvious in the product description. I guess I just have to assume that if it does not say "Complete and Unabridged," it's been mutilated.

The story has been summarized before: from an army camp, Charles Ryder reminisces about his youthful passion for a young aristocrat, Lord Flyte, and his subsequent passion for Lord's Flyte's sister, who has much in her of the young man - meaning she looks a lot like him.
Let me dispel a few misconceptions. First, that this is a masterpiece of style:
it ain't. the style is pedestrian, efficient in a workaday manner. There are no arresting phrases, no memorable scenes. When the emotional temper of the story rises, the author piles on a lot of qualifiers, but it all seems rather contrived, as if he was trying to get himself pumped up.
Second: that it is a brilliant portrayal of a declining aristocracy: yes, there is some of that. It is done, however, in passing, with rushed asides. There is no sustained exploration. In fact, the novel is laughably thin on framing a sense of the age in which it lives. Contemporary references are done by piling on lines of dialogue, mainly lines from Rex's oafish friends. That is cheap theatrical technique, done by someone who is merely trying to imply profundities, and not go into the trouble of actually writing them.
Third: that it is a deep exploration of religious faith, or the loss thereof. Phew. I have a question for those who say that: have you read Dostoevsky or even Graham Greene? Read Greene if you want a much deeper understanding of Catholicism in our world. The brief remarks on religion in this book are laughably simplistic: again, allusions, hints at a greater meaning, paths sketched but not followed through. What is the meaning of Julia's hysterical crisis? Can you read that and wonder where it came from?
About Sebastian. Of course he was gay. Why was he caring for the German? Just out of friendship? We don't know if Ryder was, but the narrator calls Sebastian the forerunner of his love for Julia. What does that mean?
As a novel, this is rather boring. Nothing much happens. There are a lot of re-tellings of events. Narration consists of a number of dialogues. It seems to be mainly about upper class and upper middle class young men who wanted to have sex with each other, but didn't. Classic.

If you have a Little and Brown dated 1945 and it is the 1st American Edition, one of 600 predating the trade edition, that book in good condiion is worth several hundred or more. Even if yours states January 1946 and after the 600, it is still worth in the hundreds. If you see the words "trial" or "examination" then your book is in the hundreds category. Refer to Abebooks on this.

Everything was smooth and perfect! Condition is excellent, just like new, but about 99% off a regular price! Couldn't have asked for anything better! Shipping was very expedient! I would recommend the seller to everyone!

This is the most excruciatingly drawn out, tedious, highly overrated novel I've read in a long time. I do not care that it's considered a "classic". That does not save it from its numerous shortcomings, the biggest one being that the plot was pretty thin and uninteresting, dealing mostly with the subject of religion (Catholicism) and how it can potentially destroy lives. The ending in particular was very jarring and dissatisfying. The whole Charles-Julia relationship towards the end of the book felt forced, given the fact that previously there was little interaction between the two. Be aware that Evelyn Waugh himself was mildly disparaging of his creation in hindsight. In his correspondence with Graham Greene in 1950 he wrote "I re-read Brideshead Revisited and was appalled." He continues, "It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster - the period of soya 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." If you are someone who reads books merely for their beautiful prose, then by all means read this book. However, if you are someone like me who values exciting plots and strong fully developed characters more than the use of flowery language, then skip this book. Pick any book by Graham Greene instead or even Muriel Spark, a little known Scottish author, who would always be remembered for her terse prose but incredibly imaginative, fascinating plot lines.

It is upperclass british drivel. This book should be dropped from school curriculum. This book was so bad it was no wonder when PBS picked it up and made a mini series. If you like the feeling of banging your head against the wall, read this book!!! Otherwise a caution to all who even think about reading this don't.

The reader, a deservedly acclaimed actor, who was made famous by playing Charles Ryder on T.V. made the recording sound flat. The weariness was probably an interpretive style; but, it made the listening to the recording difficult.

I seldom post reviews. However this book is so tedious, that I have to say that I'm sorry I bought it, and I no idea why it is so highly rated. I didn't see the tv series, so that must have been better. Even 12 years of post high school education doesn't help me enjoy this, and although the writing is somewhat colorful and descriptive, it doesn't make me care about any of these people. A story about an alcoholic, lots of description, where not much happens for many, many pages, a very slow soap opera; Thankfully it's not too long.

There are many themes in this book but, to me, the greatest is the evil of religion and how its avarice nature, unchecked, will worm into lives and destroy all joy and happiness without compunction. This message, wrapped in Waugh's sweet, elegant prose conducts the reader through this poignant, morose tale, that is, even still, utterly delightful.

FORMAT. There is one narrator, Simon Ryder. The novel is in four parts. The first and last are in the "present" while the middle two are in the "past." The middle two compose the bulk of the book.

SYNOPSIS. The first of them is apparently about an eccentric h*m*s*x**l alcoholic, Sebastian Flyte (I wrote that word that way to deceive the automatic censor). It is mostly about how his alcoholism gets him kicked out of Oxford and how his family tries to get him dried up, without avail. Ryder is in the background, but interacts with the other characters.

The second of them is apparently about the affair between Ryder and Flyte's sister Julia. They both are unhappily married and decide to divorce their spouses and then marry one another. However, after they are divorced but before they remarry (or something like that), Julia's father dies. He had become a Catholic to marry his wife, but had been excommunicated later. But, in his death throes, he made some gestures that might have indicated that he wanted to become a Catholic again. The whole family (also Catholic), whether observant or not, is concerned about his soul. They are therefore relieved when it seems he might have repented. Ryder, seeing this, suddenly stops being a jaded agnostic and believes in God. He and Julia decide not to marry after all, since Catholicism forbade remarriage unless the marriage was annulled by the Holy See.

The first and last parts are Ryder returning to the Flyte family house (known as Brideshead, it being at the head of the stream called Bride) years later.

EVALUATION. The dialogue is frequently scintillating and delightful. The narration has some great phrases. Take, for example, the metaphor, "thin bat's squeak of sexuality audible only to me," which refers to his reaction when a girl asks him to light a cigarette, apparently requiring him to put it in his mouth. The narration, however, is obnoxious at times. Waugh tried to use a physics metaphor without even describing the metaphor, pleading ignorance of physics.

The division of the book mostly into two separate stories is bad. It disassociates parts of the story from one another, interrupting the narrative and one's identification with the characters. In fact, the two halves seem like different novels.

The whole feel of the story of a dysfunctional English aristocratic family in the 1930s was warm and fuzzy.

Now for the book's purpose, which is supposedly to show divine grace. Firstly, I do not like novels that try to demonstrate a proposition or teach a lesson. Secondly, I do not like the proposition or lesson of this book. Are we to believe that grace comes at certain times to certain persons for no given reason? That seems quite odd. The idea that one has lived his whole life one way can suddenly decide to change at the last minute is inexplicable. Also, it seems that the book is saying that those raised Catholic cannot escape the faith. That seems to deny the power of choice of the one taught. I regard these theses as repugnant.

I'd first of all like to know how many of the people who gave this book positive reviews are catholics or episcopalians. I'll bet the percentage is very high. I hate stories that try to push a religious (or any other) agenda; i.e., stories with a "message." The first writer who discovers the meaning of life will be qualified to write a message novel. Until then, I wish all others would desist.

Aside from that, the writing is coy and pretentious--a sort of snob's "Rebecca," though the house, the characters and the plot in DuMaurier's novel were much more interesting. Waugh should have stuck to humor and should not have tried to create great literature, which this definitely is not; what a bore he became in his old age.

I was looking for a Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility type book only fast forwarded toward World War I England. Even with reading the sample from Kindle, I did not see what was coming--homosexuality. For starts, the author "Evelyn" is a male??? I don't care how literarily beautifully it is couched. It is what it is.

I am in agreement with God's Word about men with men and women with women--it is sin and the wages of sin is death! Period. I'm not saying I hate anyone, nor does God, but I--like Him--hate the sin and seriously do find it repulsive!

Joyce