2.84k reviews for:

Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

3.87 AVERAGE

emotional reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I enjoyed reading the novel. It had a slow beginning but then something just clicked and I couldn't put it down. The ending is bittersweet. It's sad to be so connected to people for such a large portion of your life, only to one day be completely estranged from them. Like you've never met them at all.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Love the writing as usual from Waugh, went a bit stale in the middle due to me having zero interest in the main character. Sebastian, his friends, and the final chapters were the highlights for me - particularly the final scenes with Lord Brideshead.
emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I can see why Brideshead Revisited is considered one of the English classics, I think it very much encapsulates what a lot of English society felt during the Second World War, reflecting on their pasts as they were sent off to bloody conflict. It's also kind of a great society narrative, and while the sections happening during World War Two are few and far between, I think they really add to Charles's sadness. About halfway through the book, I thought to myself, "Wow, this book is kinda gay" and then I looked it up, and the author was bisexual and had multiple same-sex relationships when he was in college. My only gripe is that I wish we had more closure with Charles and Sebastian's relationship, but I can understand why it ended the way it did.
dark reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
emotional reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
reflective medium-paced
emotional sad slow-paced
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No

This book was a slog. Every character was unlikable and I don’t understand the point of anything. Felt like a few disjointed little stories and I don’t understand why or how they were put together in this one single novel still presented to us as something worth keeping relevant several decades later. I’ve never given less of a fuck about a book ever and this is coming from someone who was so genuinely excited to read it.

2 stars because the first part of the book was enjoyable and certainly contributed to the rest of the book feeling so insufferable.

i liked the first 2/3 of the book. but then they started talking about catholicism and it got really boring. i'm not catholic so maybe if you were catholic you could enjoy the last 40 pages. charles sucks cordelia is the only good person in this book except aloysius but he isn't real. side note no one in england knows how to pronounce names. al-oh-ishus? hello? rip sebastian i guess. king kept it real