Reviews - Brideshead Revisited: The sacred & profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder

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Brideshead Revisited: The sacred & profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Beautiful writing and gorgeous phrases lost in a limp narrative of soulless robotic aristocrats. Half constructed scenes blend into beige with fuzzy, confusing narration. The novel is primarily focused on over-the-top foppishness and faux-religiosity and never gets off the ground into anything compassionate or believable. Snail paced and molasses plotted with the subtlety of a chainsaw at sunrise.

Brideshead made me long for Tom Wolfe sipping a martini with raised pinky. Waugh is an inferior Truman Capote, a discount Edward St Aubyn. One visit was plenty.

annamckee's review against another edition

4.5

reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

gabriella_batel's review against another edition

4.25

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

bookishjohanna's review against another edition

4.0

slow-paced

mistymtn103's review

1.0

**Huge spoiler alert**

I confess, I skipped to the end. This was after reaching the point when Ryder is completely ambivalent about his own children (albeit by a woman he hardly seems to care for, but still) and it becomes clear that he's going to pursue Julia. I just couldn't bring myself to continue reading for 2 or 3 weeks. I started (and in a few cases, finished) a few other books and tried to bring my mind around to giving Ryder another try. Finally I just decided to see what happened in the last 10-20 pages or so, with the idea that if some great truth were revealed, I would backtrack and follow the progression. Ryder and Julia had an affair and both got divorces from their seemingly tepid spouses. Not much more talk about Sebastian, which did make me wonder a little. Then Julia dumped Ryder because her religion will always be between them. Thus he's left to live his life alone and join the military. Assuming Sebastian hadn't yet died of liver failure, jealous lovers or some sort of accident involving a car and his bear, perhaps Ryder should have just gone back to him and had the relationship that I thought was pretty much guaranteed when I read the first couple of chapters.