Reviews tagging 'War'

Retour à Brideshead by Evelyn Waugh

12 reviews

atamano's review against another edition

reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism and Classism

Moderate: Death, War, Religious bigotry, Infidelity, and Death of parent

Minor: Vomit

slahlum's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Toxic friendship, Terminal illness, War, Vomit, Alcoholism, Classism, Miscarriage, Death, Grief, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, and Suicide attempt

emjbarnes's review against another edition

mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Parts of this book were very difficult to follow. Long sentences just keep extending and sometimes lost my focus. The content and ideas were interesting, but the second half was much less engaging.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Racism, Racial slurs, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Miscarriage and War

kit_carmichael's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Misogyny, Classism, Forced institutionalization, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Chronic illness, Gaslighting, Grief, Mental illness, Racial slurs, and War

eli_jw's review against another edition

reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I can see why this book is held as a classic, but for me it had just about everything I hate in a novel. I finished it but I greatly considered not doing so.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Infidelity, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Terminal illness, War, Racial slurs, and Homophobia

autiquarian's review against another edition

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I felt that this was a perfectly entertaining book, well-written too, but just cannot understand why it’s labelled by critics as ‘the Oxford novel’; I fortunately did not read it expecting a campus novel, but if you are I would put it aside unless you also enjoy the novel’s other, more prevalent, themes.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Addiction, and Alcohol

Moderate: War

Minor: Miscarriage, Racial slurs, and Homophobia

amotoquinha's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism

Moderate: War

rpg_gf's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Miscarriage, Racism, and Terminal illness

Minor: War

nohousekey's review against another edition

reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racial slurs and Racism

Minor: War

chalkletters's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

Like Moab is My Washpot, Brideshead Revisited seemed wonderfully romantic to me when I read it at 23, having bought it because a boy I liked was reading it. Over ten years later, I remembered the relationship between Charles and Julia, but had forgotten that they were both married to other people, and that they don’t even get a happy ending. While I’d like to think this second reading was more objective, the truth is that it’s probably just as subjective, but in a different way. 

While I found all the characters in Brideshead Revisited interesting, none of them struck me as particularly true to life. The whole book has the dreamy, unreal tone of a Neverland — where the characters never grow up, or at least where Charles’ perspective of them and his worldview never really changes. He’s always looking back on history through a particular lens, and the story ends where it began, so that each scene has the same kind of feeling. 

Even with very little understanding of Catholicism, I found the theological discussions interesting. Like everything else, there’s a lot that goes unspoken, and I probably missed a great deal of context which would’ve helped me understand what the characters were struggling with. On the other hand, Charles is also an outsider to the Marchmains’ religion, and to some extent their social class, so maybe feeling a distance from it all is the intended effect. 

Although I didn’t love the romance, or the characters, this time around, I still appreciated the prose, and found plot interesting, if rather sad.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Alcoholism, Death of parent, Death, and War