storytellers

eleison · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 3:22 pm Post subject: Brideshead Revisited - Reviewed

I finished reading Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" weeks ago, but it went by so fast it has taken me this long to sort out my feelings for it.

Love comes to mind, and the entire pantheon of feelings that come with it: renewal, sorrow, etcetera. It is not a book I can praise or recommend lightly, as, though quite short, it takes commitment to read.

Commitment, or its lack, is at the core of this story. It disguises itself as a love story, first between two Oxford boys and later between a man and a woman. Later still, between man and his profession. In the background, the roaring twenties and their consequences and, eventually, World War Two. Closer to the surface, religion plays its part. A good number of the main characters were or are Catholic, though the narrator is an admitted atheist agnostic.

There are many things, it seems, that people are drawn to commit to. Be it love, duty, faith, or even a place, like Brideshead. Some of the promises made in commitment are later taken back, but always bittersweetly. (Or, as Sappho would say "sweet bitter".)

The story follows Charles Ryder and his involvement with the unusual family that lives at Brideshead. The bulk of the story is told in retrospect, as he recalls the place that was, perhaps, never a home, but certainly a stage for a strange drama. A place he had thought about calling home and people he thought about loving.

In a way, very little happens throughout the novel. What does happen is predictable, but that is a part of its charm. (One character even warns us about charm and where it leads.) In retrospect, events are always predictable because you know how they happened already.

I have more to say about this book. Lots more, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone either. I hope I have intrigued some of you enough to read it, so that I might talk to you about it when you are done.

_________________
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
~Sigmund Freud~