Review: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I decided to read this because it’s been in the back of my mind as one of those books that you ought to read. And I made a little challenge for myself this year to try and diversify my reading, theming the months of year and finding books to read to fit that theme and January was Jazzy January - books from the jazz age. 

This book opens in the 1940s, but the majority of the story is set in the 1920s. We follow Charles Ryder, a young man beginning his studies at Oxford in 1923. His life so far has been pretty uneventful, solidly placed in the English upperclass with all the comforts belonging to that position. When he meets Sebastian at Oxford his life changes and he gets access to the world of the landed English gentry, when Sebastian introduces him to his family. Whether that was good or bad for Charles is uncertain. 

Not a lot happens in this book plotwise. It’s more about the relationships between the characters and these are marked by absence, dislike and disappointment. 

I actually looked up this book on Wikipedia because I was interested to know what this book was supposed to be ABOUT. As I said I felt like nothing much happened other than a bunch of failed relationships, romantic and platonic. According to Wikipedia the themes of the book are Catholicism, nostalgia for the English aristocracy and somewhat controversially a homosexual relationship. The nostalgia is evident throughout the book as is Catholicism. Not everyone agrees on the nature of the relationship between the two men, though. There were some allusions to it and depending on your viewpoint you could interpret it either way. I thought there was definitely some feeling on one part, but whether it was reciprocated was unclear to me and whatever it was definitely fizzled out along the way without really ever being much in evidence at all. 

I gave this book 2 stars out of 5. It was okay, but it lacked feeling. Everything was so underplayed that it was just boring.