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Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

Start date: July 1, 2009

Finish date: July 31, 2009

Discussion: Brideshead Revisited

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Brideshead Revisited

Epilogue
By theduckthief · 5 posts · 36 views

last updated Aug 29, 2009 01:09PM

Prologue
By theduckthief · 1 post · 32 views

last updated Jul 01, 2009 03:51PM

What Members Thought

Mar 03, 2011 Charly rated it did not like it

2011 me: Thus continues my 1920s-1940s British fiction obsession (Wodehouse, Waugh, Woolf, Christie . . . )

The font on this book is old-fashioned and my brain doesn't like it. It looks like typesetting as opposed to word processed.

2022 me: turns out Evelyn himself didn't care for wartime typesetting, either. I passed through many copies — one bought secondhand in a fashionable district of Mexico City, a library copy borrowed from a local branch that was flooded in 2017, originally built in the ...more

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Jul 04, 2010 theduckthief rated it liked it

"The chapel showed no ill effects of its long neglect. The paint was as fresh and bright as ever. And the lamp burned once more before the altar. I knelt and said a prayer - an ancient, newly-learned form of words. I thought that the builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend. They made a new house with the stones of the old castle. Year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness, until, in sudden frost, came the Age of Hooper. The place was desolate a "The chapel showed no ill effects of its long neglect. The paint was as fresh and bright as ever. And the lamp burned once more before the altar. I knelt and said a prayer - an ancient, newly-learned form of words. I thought that the builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend. They made a new house with the stones of the old castle. Year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness, until, in sudden frost, came the Age of Hooper. The place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing. Quo modo sedet sola civitas - vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And yet, I thought, that is not the last word. It is not even an apt word - it is a dead word from ten years back."

Charles Ryder is a young student at Oxford University when a chance encounter introduces him to Lord Sebastian Flyte. Sebastian invites Ryder into his family home, Brideshead, and in fact, into his life. But each member of Sebastian's family is somewhat damaged if eccentric. Charles takes to them though as his own family life is less than satisfactory. The two young men grow close over one summer but all too soon things begin to change. Sebastian drinks, driving him far from home and away from Charles. Without his friendship Charles soon becomes estranged from the rest of the family, only returning to Brideshead many years later to find it much changed.

This was my first Evelyn Waugh book and he didn't let me down. The flow of his sentence structure and his description I would say were on par with du Maurier's "Rebecca" but of a different flavour. If this book were a meal it would most definitely taste of woodsmoke. There is a certain visceral sensuousness to his writing as evinced by this paragraph: "The sole was so simple and unobtruse that Rex failed to notice it. We ate to the music of the press - the crunch of the bones, the drip of blood and marrow, the tap of the spoon basting the thin slices of breast." Waugh manages to make eating both a violent and erotic experience.

While I did love the writing in the book I found it nearly impossible to connect to and care about the characters. There was almost a vulgarity to their qualms about daily life. I couldn't wrap my head around being so rich as to be hard done by. I know that the reader isn't neccesarily supposed to like the family and their decadent lifestyle but because I didn't care about the characters I didn't care what happenend to them either. Perhaps it's the distance between writer and reader that makes this book feel so inaccesible to me. Waugh did write it more than 60 years ago but to be fair, I have no problem connecting with Cervantes or Austen and their works are far older.

My main beef with the book was the point in time at which it started. I know the book is about loss and mourning what has passed but this felt like entering a theatre after the end credits have started. I wanted to see everything from the beginning. I wanted to experience the descent of these people, not reflect on their already decaying family unit. "Brideshead Revisited" encompasses love and loss, religion and secularity, loyalty and infidelity, everything one could want in a book. It was unfortunately not the book for me.
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Feb 05, 2013 Holly rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-lit

Only three stars because I found it a bit exhausting...all these characters broken, bad, talking but never really saying anything. But that could be the genius here, the movement of the novel is like an iceburg, the bulk of it moving under the surface. All of the escaping these characters go through is too much like real life...Julia's character is brilliant-at the end. She would be the subject of endless delicious sessions of analysis. I wanted this book to end and when it did I was left deflat ...more

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Jul 22, 2008 Arianna rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-book

An interesting whirlwind through a lifetime in England. I guess this book points out how much money does NOT buy happiness. Nor does religion, really. It was interesting to see Waugh's take on religion and family relations, particularly on the institution of marriage. I just still feel kind of stunned (despite how long it took me to read), like: wow, it's already over? It seemed so suddenly complete. But it told the story it had to tell, and thoroughly at that. I did also really enjoy how it was ...more

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Apr 28, 2009 Maggie rated it it was amazing

This is one of my top 10 favourite books ever

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Jun 03, 2008 Jen rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic-fiction, british-literature

I really enjoyed this book although it is certainly a tragedy in the end. However it embodies everything I love about British literature and tells a wonderfully vivid story. It's interesting too because I don't really find Charles Ryder particularly likable, yet I still feel a deep sense of sadness for him. ...more

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Jan 16, 2011 Manday rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, book-club, 2013

This book was not at all what I expected (not sure what I expected).
I am still really deciding whether I liked it or not, so the rating is likely to change (and if not the rating, the review.

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