Brideshead Revisited

********Please note - contains spoilers ************ One's head is rather spinning, there are so many terribly good things and likewise so very much abject wretchedness it's hard to begin. Let us try. 1) This book is the twisted story of a homosexual affair, which I was truly not expecting it to be. I......more

Our narrator, a non-Catholic officer based on the home front in World War II Britain, revisits a mansion he first visited as a young man and reflects back on his close relationship with a Catholic family. A non-Catholic himself, he reports to us about their habits and customs almost as if he were a......more

I just finished rereading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, a book I pick up every couple of years or so. This time I read it because of the new movie version movie (the one with Emma Thompson as the Lady Marchmain Flyte). As a critic, I get to see a pre-screening of the new movie on Tuesday; I a......more

I knew very little about this novel (published in 1945, absurdly well known, adapted to miniseries the year I was born) going in, and what I did think I knew turned out to be wrong. It's funnier than I expected, which surprised me, and also more truthful than I expected, which pleases me. Mostly, I......more

"Brideshead Revisited" is almost the opposite of Waugh's own "Vile Bodies"/"Bright Young Things" in that it starts off as a tragedy, or at least pretty damn close to E. M. Forster's "Maurice" terrain (thus tres tragique) and ends in such a jubilant & comedic form (sorry for this mega old spoiler). I......more