As my introduction to Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited gave me a taste of an author who can build a beautiful, revealing and devastatingly painful story.

Charles Ryder is a WWII soldier, stationed in Britain, who has just been relocated to a new headquarters. Much to his surprise, he finds that it is Brideshead, a country manor he first visited as an Oxford student. It was the scene of some of his favorite memories and also his most painful. This novel takes us back as Charles recounts his history with his college friend, Sebastian Flyte, and Flyte's family.

I found much of this novel to be engaging and fascinating. There were a few parts that were a bit slower paced than the rest of the story and I struggled a bit through them. Still, this was an incredibly well-written and believable story which deals with such diverse topics as Catholicism, war, English nobility and homosexuality.

http://webereading.com/2009/12/i-have... ( )

A lovely, lovely and heartbreaking book. The shallowness of the characters is, shall I say, only skin deep. Well worth a reread. ( )

This book is a really well written tome about pretty unlikeable people. There's a whiny rich boy with a teddy bear who doesn't like his mother and decides that's a good reason to be an alcoholic...and his slutty father, and soul less sister, and Charles. Who returns from two years abroad and can't be bothered to visit his own children. It's hard for me to like a book where literally none of the characters are sympathetic because I just...don't care what happens to them. ( )

One of the best books in the English language. Luminous!

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.... ( )

The peripheral characters in this novel are, to me, very sad. There is a fervent search for grace on the part of Julia's and Sebastian's mother that eventually cripples both of them. Charles is the catalyst for a deeper understanding, which comes and goes in often confusing interactions. I think the novel is reflective of Waugh's own conflict about religion. ( )