Book challenge: BBC book list
This has been on my reading list for a while, I don't know why, it just has. So I thought it was good for the BBC challenge.
Brideshead Revisited is narrated by Charles Ryder, a friend of the Roman Catholic, British aristocratic family, the Flytes, whose ancestral home is Brideshead. Charles first meets Sebastian Flyte, who an eccentric alcoholic, in college at Oxford in the early 1920s. The two become fast friends and Charles is pulled into the world of the Flytes through him. We learn about their father who went to Italy and never came home after the war (he is still alive, just doesn’t like his wife), their mother who is a staunch Roman Catholic, the ho-hum older brother and heir to the family title, Julia the glamorous sister, and Cordelia the youngest child. There are two main parts to this story: Charles’ friendship with Sebastian and then many years later (somewhat spoiler???) his love affair with Julia.
Unimpressed is how I would describe my reaction to reading this book. It wasn’t that the book was bad, it just failed to wow me. I felt it was unfinished in terms of Charles relationship with Sebastian even though the Julia story line wrapped up nicely. I would be curious to see the movie or the mini-series to see how they tie all this together. I don’t see how you could get an extended mini-series out of this book, there just didn’t seem to be enough material for that. I also couldn’t quite make out if Waugh was making some kind of commentary on Roman Catholicism? I could google it I am sure but I just don’t care enough to. Overall, I’d give it two stars.
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