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Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
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Paperback
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Evelyn Waugh's best-loved novel and the basis for the PBS television production, Brideshead Revisited, the epic story of a great Catholic family in a doomed aristocratic age.
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.
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| The definitive reading of Waugh's masterpiece |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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For some reason the reviews for the audiobook and the novel have been mixed. So, be aware that my review is for the audiobook as read by Jeremy Irons.
I listened to this audiobook before I had even seen Jeremy Irons' wonderful performance in the miniseries, so it can't be said that I was influenced by that. I have never been a fan of his. He made his bones in the types of movies I'd never had a desire to see, and I was never too impressed with his performances when he deigned to appear in movies I would watch. I always found him to be a irritating, one-note actor, doing a bad impression of a stereotypically stiff British aristocrat. However, I could listen to his reading of "Brideshead Revisited" over and over and over again.
He has set the benchmark here. His skill in differentiating characters ranks with the best, his vocal delivery approaches musical mellifluence, and his dramatic interpretation is perfection itself. Part of it may have to do with the fact that the source material is as near perfect a book as has ever been written; part may have to do with his having gained an understanding of the novel when he played in the miniseries. But Jeremy Irons has a talent of his own that makes this audiobook a thing of beauty and brings the novel to life. If you loved Brideshead Revisited, I believe you'll cherish this audiobook as much as I do.
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| over-rated |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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I'd first of all like to know how many of the people who gave this book positive reviews are catholics or episcopalians. I'll bet the percentage is very high. I hate stories that try to push a religious (or any other) agenda; i.e., stories with a "message." The first writer who discovers the meaning of life will be qualified to write a message novel. Until then, I wish all others would desist.
Aside from that, the writing is coy and pretentious--a sort of snob's "Rebecca," though the house, the characters and the plot in DuMaurier's novel were much more interesting. Waugh should have stuck to humor and should not have tried to create great literature, which this definitely is not; what a bore he became in his old age.
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| A genuine 20th-century classic |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Brideshead Revisited is in many ways an anomalous work in the oeuvre of Evelyn Waugh. Better known for his scathingly funny satires, Waugh, in writing this novel, turned his freewheeling wit and awe-inspiring command of the English language toward writing what is perhaps his most serious work. The book is nonetheless, in many places, hilarious--but more so, from start to finish, Brideshead Revisited is charming, convincing, and infinitely compelling in providing a timeless panorama of English youth and high society whose power and beauty transcends all cultural barriers.
I've heard all the criticisms of this book--I've heard Martin Amis accuse it of snobbery for its defense of English nobility; George Orwell ridicule the conservative sentiments of Waugh that sometimes seep into the novel; and many a critic denounce the novel's attempts to unite the story with theology as a failure. But none of that matters to me, because Brideshead Revisited was one of the few books I've read that I sincerely regretted finishing, for the sole reason that I'd rarely read a book that so thoroughly engrossed, entertained, and enlightened me.
Well nigh all of the characters, minor and major alike, attract the reader's unwavering interest, often accompanied by a strong sense of sympathy, scorn, or even both. The book centers on the relationship of the protagonist, Charles Ryder, with the entire Flyte family, an aristocratic clan of Catholics who fascinate Ryder. Without giving away too many specifics, Brideshead Revisited, before its duration is spent, will relate one of the most authentic accounts of male friendship in literature, as well as what is, in my view, one of few literary love affairs whose ultimate success I found myself passionately rooting for all the way. From the witty and eminently likable Sebastian, to the sometimes endearingly maladroit Bridey, to the tragic Lady Marchmain, to the radiant and resolute Julia, the Flytes are one of the best-developed and most intriguing families you'll ever read about. As their stories, and Charles', unfold and interwine, the novel marches toward its inevitable and all-too-human conclusion, while drawing the reader closer and closer with every turn of the page--with some help from a stellar supporting cast.
Perhaps the aspect of the book that fascinates me the most is, although all of the characters an events therein are figments of Waugh's imagination, one gets the irrepressible sense that the story could have played out no other way. The novel, of course, is rife with Waugh's choice themes and motifs--but to me those, and their alleged flaws, are all secondary concerns, because Brideshead Revisited is masterly storytelling at its pinnacle.
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| Strangling roots in a changing world lead to flight or return. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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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!
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| Charming and delicious |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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A novel of remarkable depth and wistfulness tied to sometimes outrageous humour and a whiff of satire -- truly a delicate balancing act, and here carried off with panache. 'Brideshead Revisited' is a riveting, immersive novel that will carry you to a nostalgic yesteryear of the British aristocracy, complete with all its hidden warts and lesions. A short but lovely read.
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