Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh · first published 1945
67% recommend25% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
A richly written novel on love, faith and morals, with a moral depth that rewards rereading. Suited to literary fiction readers who want serious themes beneath elegant prose.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.
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This is pretty weak sauce, poorly written, and giving only superficial insight into Waugh's depth of character. His diaries probably give the most insight, but if you only read Brideshead Revisited, you'll be a much richer person.
on “What Evelyn Waugh saw in America” ↗Or, as cousin Melchior put it, 'anything other than a first or a fourth is wasted'. (Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially)…
on “More Students Are Turning Away from College and Toward Apprenticeships” ↗…Bonfire of the Vanities.” You can read as many guides to living your best life as you wish, but I defy you to find a better account of the travails of love, happiness, faith and morals as Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.” Histories of the Cold War are fine, but nothing portrays the moral ambiguities and complexities of geopolitics as effectively as John le Carré’s novels of the age. (Though not his later ones, where…
on “A Novel Idea: Read More Fiction” ↗…that has been floating around (largely as a facebook meme) recently. http://fashionabroad.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/bbc-book-list-... I'd already read 32 of 'em, but I'm working my way through two more (Brideshead Revisited, which I'm enjoying, and The Wasp Factory, which I'm really not [and I don't think you're supposed to]). There's some absolute crap on the list as well (Bridget Jones' Diary? The Five People You Meet…
on “Harvard Classics Bookshelf” ↗IMHO the best 20th century novel in the English language: Brideshead Revisited. A cursory reading, or viewing of the TV series or recent film, can leave the misleading impression that it's a eulogy to aristocratic privilege. But that's because it wears its more profound themes so…
on “Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why?” ↗…TV series it would be excellent. There is huge potential as well because you could do, say Neuromancer in 4 hours and then do the rest of the trilogy. The best screen adaptation of a book I know of, Brideshead Revisited from 1981, took the book almost word for word and made a fairly long TV series. Neuromancer and the rest of the trilogy could be done the same way.
on “Apple TV+ to adapt William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer” ↗I end up re-reading "Brideshead, Revisited" about once a year. It's the rare Christian book where every single character (regardless of their relationship with Christianity) is basically screwed up.
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite classic books?” ↗How unexpected - beautifully written! It's almost surprising that the quoted passages are so familiar - I hadn't realised how affecting they are. Whilst loving the book I can't consider Brideshead Revisited without thinking of the wonderful 1980s Granada TV adaptation. I didn't dare watch the more recent film, lest it spoil the tableaux of the original.
on “Evelyn Waugh’s Decadent Redemption” ↗You should have added an Amazon affiliate link with that quote, I would have clicked it. :-) Ordered the Kindle copy based that quote alone. That, and I knew she wrote Brideshead Revisited, though haven't read it or seen the mini series.
on “Horrors of Waugh” ↗…Hemmingway was a short story writer, but somehow he is remembered for the fawning reception of Farewell to Arms. Evelyn Waugh was savagely funny if you have read Scoop, Decline and Fall or Black Mischief, but Brideshead Revisited was the critical success that got made into a sappy miniseries. It's like critics take your least spectacular and most vulnerable work and tag you with it as your best so as to ensure you are never known…
on “H.L. Mencken Reviews the Great Gatsby (1925)” ↗…Illusionist - Spencer, Scott: Men in Black - Stegner, Wallace: Joe Hill - Tartt, Donna: The Secret History - Tyler, Anne: A Patchwork Planet - Vonnegut, Kurt: Hocus Pocus - Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited - Westlake, Donald E.: The Ax
on “Stephen King: Can a Novelist Be Too Productive? (2015)” ↗Only read Decline and Fall, but it was pretty funny. A good middle of he twentieth century British comedic novel. Apparently Brideshead Revisited is among those lines as well.
on “What Evelyn Waugh saw in America” ↗…oriented their aspirations and identities around, where relationships with these characters often set them on a real life trajectory. If you read Neuromancer and became a hacker, it's a lot like reading Brideshead Revisited and accepting your sexuality, or reading Razor's Edge and dropping out and living in an ashram. Fiction before the internet did that, where it was personal experience of a relationship with characters…
on “The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk” ↗