Product Description

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and exquisitely beautiful Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants. But he also discovers a world where duty and desire, faith and earthly happiness are in conflict; a world which threatens to destroy his beloved Sebastian.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30571 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903. His first novel, Decline and Fall, was published in 1928 and it was soon followed by: Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). He travelled extensively, served in the Royal Marines and the Royal Horse Guards and continued to write, winning many prestigious literary awards. Brideshead Revisited was first published in 1945. Evelyn Waugh died in 1966.

Customer Reviews

The best book ever written
This is an absolutely fantastic story, which draws the reader in from page one, and keeps you gripped until the last word. The book covers the fortunes and misfortunes of one family over two generations, and is a times hilariously funny and immensely sad. This is Waugh's finest work - every time I finish reading it, it leaves me with an empty feeling, and I miss the characters like old friends.

Class, religion, family and repressed sexuality
BR mixes Waugh's stunning ability to create amusing, quirky characters and plotlines with an added sympathy in which many of his former books lack. BR charts the demise of the Flyte family and their seat at Brideshead in pre-WW2 English aristocracy.
The subtle relationship between our Narrator, Charles Ryder, and his first contact with the Flyte family, Sebastian, is an understated and mature study of love and although their sexual status is refuted (at the time any such "scandal" would have rendered the book unprintable) it remains that their love for each other is the strongest thing in the book. Ryder, in fact, falls for Julia, Sebastian's sister partly because of the resemblance of him.
Catholicism plays an important part in BR but it is never difficult to read for those who are unfamiliar with that faith's practices. The sense of sin, demise and values that permeate the story complements its religiousness atmosphere.
The Flyte family are the greatest assent to the menagerie of characters- bossy, upright Lady Marchmain, the absent Lord Brideshead, stuffy eldest Brideshead, camp and alcoholic Sebastian, thoughtful, spiritual Julia and pious little Cordelia. Ryder becomes part of this family and the lack of his own means he sees these eccentric people through fresh eyes.
The pace of the novel is often inconstant- the main events of the first part taking place over just a few weeks and the rest stopping at points over the subsequent years. There is also a perceptible split between the story about Sebastian and the story about Julia. However, these points are only nitpicking and BR remains one of the finest works on twentieth century aristocracy and declining religious and family values.

A wonderful look at the English aristocracy
Despite the fact that Evelyn Waugh was about as pompuos as a man can be, (one writer describing him as having "Died of snobbery") one cannot fail to be drawn into the world he desribes so vividly in the book. His dissection of the English aristocarcy during the inter war years, using Charles Ryder cleverly as the outsider looking in, gives a sharper insight than many a social or historical non fiction book would. However one senses that the early momentum of the book cannot be kept up and this proves to be true. Part one is full of life, the later parts become stagnant, and the omission of by far the most interesting character, Sebastian is a literay crime. Why on earth Waugh leaves Sebeastian out of the second half of the book is truly beyond me, and Ryder's increasingly unintersting life dominates the book for several near boring chapters. But do not be put off, the occasional sparks in the later chapters are worth it and the touching ending is fitting. However, it is the first third of the book which is the best, colourful, vivid; at times the Waugh virtually slips into poetry whilst describing the setting. A book well worth the read.