Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Evelyn WaughEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-23
ISBN: 0316042994
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of Brideshead Revisited
Book Review: Strangling roots in a changing world lead to flight or return.
Summary: 5 Stars
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!
Summary of Brideshead Revisited
This is the most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, "Brideshead Revisited" looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmain family and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize his spiritual and social distance from them.One of Waugh's most famous books, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the difficult loves of insular Englishman Charles Ryder, and his peculiarly intense relationship with the wealthy but dysfunctional family that inhabited Brideshead. Taking place in the years after World War II, Brideshead Revisited shows us a part of upper-class English culture that has been disappearing steadily.
Waugh, Evelyn Books
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