Rating: 
Summary: Imperfect Elegy
Review: Waugh's elegy to a passing way of life and ending era: the supposed death-throes of the English aristocracy in the years leading up to World War Two.Waugh admitted that he wrote the book as "a panegyric preached over an empty coffin", and it certainly reads as such. Through the eyes of the narrator, Charles Ryder, the reader is taken on a nostalgia ride through Ryder's days as a student and his later connections with the aristocratic Flyte family. The main tone is regret - at lost youth, lost love, and a lost class. The future is looked forward to with dread - Ryder regards the soldiers he commands in World War Two with something approaching contempt: "The history they taught [Hooper, an officer under Ryder's command] had had few battles in it but, instead, a profusion of detail about humane legislation and recent industrial change." Ryder (and Waugh) knows that the national effort demanded by World War Two will mean that the old order will have to change after the war ends to accommodate the aspirations of the people as a whole. The melancholy tone of the novel will surprise readers who are familiar with Waugh's more satirical works. It reflects an enduring theme in English culture which looks back to a idyllic rural past (a very powerful, yet totally mythical past) and reflects a deep unease with the Industrial Revolution and social change. The irony of it all is that Waugh's lamentations over the demise of the aristocracy greatly underestimated the (continued) adaptability of that class, and the sustaining power of that rural myth throughout English society as a whole. The funeral rites were premature. I first read "Brideshead Revisted" some years ago and decided to reread it, having read a lot of Waugh's other works. It suffers from familiarity: the TV series gave ample opportunity for it to become more widely-known, and one of the results was that it became the target of many satirists (in the British media at least). And I can appreciate what those satirists were getting at. The early parts of the novel, dealing with Ryder's days at Oxford and his homosexual relationship with Sebastian Flyte are almost a parody of the Oxford idyll - the nostalgia and hyperbole are laid on by the truck load. After Sebastian fades out as an active character (though he is still referred to throughout the novel, and one is left wondering whether Charles ever ceased to love him), the novel settles into a more restrained, yet regretful tone. The redeeming factor for all the characters is religion - portrayed until just before the end as a major burden for all of the Flytes, it triumphs. You feel that for Waugh, this was the one hope left when all else fails.
Rating: 
Summary: <3 waugh's acidity
Review: i got this book thinking it would be geniously acidic and sarcastic like waugh's other novels. i suppose, leaving my preference for waugh's usual style aside, that this book is alright. just. the story was bland, i kept waiting for something interesting to happen, and it never showed up. the main character constantly left me rolling my eyes at him. actually, everyone in the book did, besides the younger sister. she was a lovely smarta**. but i'm rambling. my point is that if you want something acidic and wickedly funny, go for the loved one or a handful of dust. just admire the gorgeous cover art in the bookstore and then reach for another one of waugh's books.
Rating: 
Summary: The Magic of Youthful Friendship
Review: I loved reading this book for two reasons, first it completely transported me into another country and into another era. Second, it captured the sheer joy of youthful friendship, where the responsibilities and trials of later life have not yet taken their toll. To me, the book realisticly portrayed the drama of life and how life's experiences change not only a persons outlook on life, but changes the dynamics between friends with whom, at some point, we felt we could never live without. What causes friendships that were once so close, to gradually fade away? This poetic tale allows you to ponder the delicate nature of both friendships and romantic relationships. Every once in a while you get in the mood for a story that will leave you in an introspective, if not melancholy mood......this is such a story.
Rating:
Summary: Fall of the House of Brideshead
Review: This is not Waugh's best novel, but is perhaps his enduringly most popular thanks to Granada's immortalisation of the book in the film version with Jeremy Irons, John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Andrews and others. Often sentimental, often dogmatic, and even, in places, precious, Brideshead remains an important part of Waugh's fictional constructions. Both a coming-of-age novel, and a paean to the English stately home, Brideshead melds history with fiction. Beginning in the midst of WWII, the story weaves back to the narrator's time at Oxford, his interaction with the Flyte family and his introduction to their home, Brideshead. The novel ends by returning to the wartime barracks and provides an image of post-war hope, despite the rain and the gloom and the depression of war and loss. The hope does not stem from a regaining of the past, or the revival of the narrator's relationships with the Flyte family, but instead comes from his acceptance of the Catholic faith - which plays a large role in the novel, as both the narrator's foil and his eventual salvation. This novel may not sit well with readers who enjoyed novels such as Vile Bodies or Black Mischief or Scoop, but will appeal to readers who enjoy Waugh's humour without necessarily enjoying his usual acerbity.
Rating:
Summary: near miss, but better than most
Review: I very much wanted to like this book, but didn't. Waugh is one of a group of conservative, mostly-Catholic, British writers (Anthony Powell, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene) who have defied the conventional wisdom of the time they wrote & have outlasted the much more numerous contemporary writers of the Left. And I loved his book Scoop. Brideshead tells the story of Charles Ryder and his infatuation with the dysfunctional, upperclass, Roman Catholic, Marchmain Family in the years between the Wars. The characters are too effete and indolent to sustain our interest, until the rather more interesting conclusion--wherein most of the Marchmain clan have their own religious epiphanies--which nearly redeems the book. I'd call this one a near miss, but better than most. GRADE: C
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Language and an Intriguing Story
Review: Although Brideshead Revisted starts out a little dry, this novel's beautiful language and syntax will definitely keep the book in your hands. The story is about a young man, Charles Ryder, and his relationships with the Flyte family. Sebastian Flyte, the younger brother, is Charles' best friend throughout his college days. Sebastian has a whole family full of characters that challenge Charles to re-evaluate his opinions on everything from religion to relationships. I don't think my words can do justice, though, to the words of Evelyn Waugh, his writing is masterful, and I believe you will thoroughly enjoy reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Troubled Genius
Review: Evelyn Waugh's BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is a troubling and flawed work of genius. Written during World War II and framed by the conversion of the Brideshead estate into an army camp during the war, the novel depicts the youth and early adulthood of one Charles Ryder. The 40-year-old army captain that the war makes of Ryder recalls the days of his optimistic youth as a close friend of teddy-bear toting Sebastian Flyte, younger son of the Brideshead household and classmate of his at Oxford. Sebastian awakens much in Charles, and it is arguable whether he doesn't awaken more than does his sister Julia, who later becomes Ryder's fiancee. For the 220 or so pages that constitute Part One this book comes off as a splendid (though not aggressively hostile) satire of upper class British society in the 1920s. Especially of the particular damage that the "long-suffering" Catholic mother can do to her loved ones (I kept thinking, "O, the martyrdom!" every time Lady Marchmain used one of her patented guilt trips to twist the psychological and spiritual arms of her children--Sebastian most often.) BRIDESHEAD REVISITED is also a powerful "lost illusions" type of novel, but the particular illusions lost don't seem any more attractive than the reality that replaces them. "Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions--with the aid of my five senses," says Charles, but that seems limiting, doesn't it? It does to Waugh but his answer isn't necessarily any more appealing. Part One is hilarious and promises much. Part Two, sorry to say, does not deliver on that promise. The satire stops and the soap opera begins. Sebastian disappears and Ryder becomes a much less sympathetic character--why he would fall in love with Julia in the first place is hard to fathom. A great problem with this novel is that it seems to place the Catholic religion in an unflattering light to the extent that the reader would think that Waugh himself was anti-Catholic. Think again. He was a convert well before he wrote this book and despite the fact that he DOES present Catholicism as being the last thing anyone would want to fall into, people fall. The fact that they fall into rather than embrace Catholicism sucks away whatever joy might have been left in the novel--I was reminded of the line from Kevin Smith's movie DOGMA, paraphrased here: "Catholics don't celebrate their faith, they mourn it." So, in celebration I must say that to call Waugh a fine writer is to sell him far too short. He is a masterful stylist and a brilliant wit who can lift you up and get under your skin. Let him.
Rating:
Summary: A very beautiful book
Review: This is a very beautiful book. It stirs all my senses with vivid description of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and feelings. That's all I have to say about this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Orphans of the storm
Review: The most melancholic and beautiful book I've ever read. It sumerges you in a lost world and makes you miss an innocent age, a younger world where persons where so close while the storm was outside. With a depth sense of humor, Waugh tells the details of a perfect world that the characters lose and you spent the rest of the book missing it while you can feel you're growing, with the subsequent sense of desilution and apathy, at the same time the characters do. And the end you can feel that the good times are not coming back, but they were good, aren't they?. If at least there was a Sebastian in our life, we can remember him.
Rating:
Summary: One of the few good books about the decay of the upper class
Review: Waugh is a great writer! If you don't get to read this book, read his other works. This book covers talks about a wealthy family and how it slowly fell into obscurity. Charles Ryder reports on friendships with various family members - primarily about schoolmate and his sister. The relationships give great insight on topics such as religion and alcoholism.
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