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A review by notwellread
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
5.0
This was as good as I expected it would be, though in a different way. (Also, the reviews for this book all look great, so I must admit I feel a little intimidated in writing this.)
The book is highly emotionally and character-driven (not much in the way of plot at all, now that I think about it), and verges itself around a kind of passionate melodrama, with discussions of religion, addiction, and family dynamics thrown in. I was hoping for more LGBTQ stuff, and I thought that Charles’ own relationship with Catholicism would play a larger role (the fault of another misleading blurb), but I still really appreciated and learnt from the way that Catholicism was dealt with, especially towards the end. (I actually found the differences in attitudes between British Catholicism and Cara’s Italian Catholicism quite funny.) I also learnt a lot of new vocabulary! I suppose Waugh wanted sophisticated language to reflect the subject matter, since it doesn’t seem (to me) to parallel other books from the 20s/30s/40s in writing style.
The relationship between Sebastian and the rest of his family that is foreshadowed after Charles’ first visit to Brideshead was dealt with more subtly than I expected, and ended up having more of a focus on Charles’ changing relationship with them than Sebastian’s, as he becomes a sort of unofficial member of the family. Unusually for me, I preferred the first half to the second, perhaps because it becomes highly melancholy as Charles and the other characters age, and we don’t really get a sense of closure for Sebastian after he was effectively the main character for the first 100 pages or so. I enjoyed the Oxford parts because, as I live here right now, I was able to envision them well and it was fun to imagine the characters romping around a city that’s already a physical place in my mind – in the second half I didn’t have this advantage. Also, Cordelia was really my favourite character and I wish she had got a bit more closure or insight into her future, that she would regain her peppiness and quirkiness after the war, and a bit of hope that she’ll be happier in the future, though I suppose that’s not really the point.
This is good for people who have the typical panics about cultural degradation that, let’s be honest, permeate pretty much every age, since that seems to be one of the bigger underlying themes that I can identify – however, I think the way Waugh glorifies and glamorises the upper class might annoy some, but, like it or not, it’s quite common in novels of this period. (I feel like there are some deeper significances that I am still missing, so I would like to read some criticisms of it still, but these are my impressions.) Is it also perhaps about how European cultural values are better than British ones? Also, Charles at the end has lost all the connections he used to have, but can still appreciate the beauty of the house, and this is what makes him smile in the last line: in other words, art is better than people (– this is a moral I hope we can all get behind).
The book is highly emotionally and character-driven (not much in the way of plot at all, now that I think about it), and verges itself around a kind of passionate melodrama, with discussions of religion, addiction, and family dynamics thrown in. I was hoping for more LGBTQ stuff, and I thought that Charles’ own relationship with Catholicism would play a larger role (the fault of another misleading blurb), but I still really appreciated and learnt from the way that Catholicism was dealt with, especially towards the end. (I actually found the differences in attitudes between British Catholicism and Cara’s Italian Catholicism quite funny.) I also learnt a lot of new vocabulary! I suppose Waugh wanted sophisticated language to reflect the subject matter, since it doesn’t seem (to me) to parallel other books from the 20s/30s/40s in writing style.
The relationship between Sebastian and the rest of his family that is foreshadowed after Charles’ first visit to Brideshead was dealt with more subtly than I expected, and ended up having more of a focus on Charles’ changing relationship with them than Sebastian’s, as he becomes a sort of unofficial member of the family. Unusually for me, I preferred the first half to the second, perhaps because it becomes highly melancholy as Charles and the other characters age, and we don’t really get a sense of closure for Sebastian after he was effectively the main character for the first 100 pages or so. I enjoyed the Oxford parts because, as I live here right now, I was able to envision them well and it was fun to imagine the characters romping around a city that’s already a physical place in my mind – in the second half I didn’t have this advantage. Also, Cordelia was really my favourite character and I wish she had got a bit more closure or insight into her future, that she would regain her peppiness and quirkiness after the war, and a bit of hope that she’ll be happier in the future, though I suppose that’s not really the point.
This is good for people who have the typical panics about cultural degradation that, let’s be honest, permeate pretty much every age, since that seems to be one of the bigger underlying themes that I can identify – however, I think the way Waugh glorifies and glamorises the upper class might annoy some, but, like it or not, it’s quite common in novels of this period. (I feel like there are some deeper significances that I am still missing, so I would like to read some criticisms of it still, but these are my impressions.) Is it also perhaps about how European cultural values are better than British ones? Also, Charles at the end has lost all the connections he used to have, but can still appreciate the beauty of the house, and this is what makes him smile in the last line: in other words, art is better than people (– this is a moral I hope we can all get behind).