Brideshead Revisited
Or: Catholicism, you’ve done it again! My understanding is that Evelyn Waugh had complex feelings about Catholicism, at least at the point of writing this book, because he got properly into it later in life.
At the beginning of this book, we’re in World War 2, and now-army guy (I can never remember ranks, but like, a reasonably high one I think) Charles Ryder is finding a place for his unit (I also don’t know military groupings) to stay while they do some kind of war-preparation thing (ditto warfare). Anyway, his buddy says there’s a cool country estate nearby that they can use. It’s called Brideshead. Yes, says Charles, I know it.
And then bam, we’re back in Oxford in the early ’20s and Charles has a very close friendship - not explicitly gay in a way that a 2025 novel would be gay, but pretty gay - with fancy lad Sebastian Flye. His family live in a country estate called Brideshead. Sebastian is reluctant to talk about, or have anyone meet his family. He and Charles spend a lot of time getting pissed. Charles talks to (non-ambiguously gay) Anthony Blance and all they can talk about is Sebastian. He is very much the Poochie of (at least the first half) of the novel. Eventually Charles gets to go to Brideshead and meet the family: older brother Brideshead (or “Bridey”, don’t think he actually got a regular name), older sister Julia (more to come), younger sister and devoutly Catholic child Cordelia, and mother Lady Marchmain. Dad is out of the picture because he’s fecked off to Italy with his mistress. More on him later. And that’s kind of the entire Sebastian plot. After this, he just drinks more and more, leaves the country, ruins himself, starts living with some German guy with an open leg wound, and is basically never heard from again. People talk about him, and he ends up in Morocco I think, but that’s it, we hardly knew thee.
An aside for two characters:
First, Charles’ dad, with whom he stays a few times when he’s not in Oxford. Every time Charles talks to his dad, the latter is instantly bored by it and keeps just saying aloud his son should probably go away somewhere, or at least be quiet so he can read. At one point, Charles returns after a year and a half and his dad’s first words are “back so soon?”.
Second, Rex Mottram. Rex is a Canadian dullard who wants to become an MP, and marries Julia. He has the most hilariously utilitarian approach to conversion (from Protestantism), consistently just asking the priest what the answers are so he can parrot them back. (“Does Christ have multiple forms?”, “Tell me the answer and I’ll agree with you”). He runs into trouble when it is revealed he has an ex-wife he divorced in Canada, and so can’t get re-married as a Catholic to Julia. He learns about an annulment and immediately asks if he can buy one. When, sadly, he cannot, he just sends a telegram to Julia’s dad to see if a Protestant wedding is ok, and immediately gets a reply saying, yeah, that’s fine. Problem solved, good job, Rex.
Back to it, Charles gets married, becomes a painter (of buildings, as in pictures of buildings) and has an affair with Julia. It’s ok though, because his wife had an affair too, offscreen, as it were. There’s a really good sequence on a cruise ship in a storm, where Charles and Julia are among the only ones who can keep their lunch down and start the thing up while drinking and gambling with the other non-sickened passengers. There’s also a bit soon after this, which is among the most unlikeable I’ve seen a protagonist in a novel (and I’ve read a lot of Bret Easton Ellis) when Charles arrives home from the Amazon and, if I’m remembering it right, hasn’t seen one of his children for two years and has literally never met the other, but still chooses to go off to a hotel with Julia. Not even phoning it in.
He gets divorced, unsurprisingly. So does Julia, eventually. They plan to marry, but suddenly Lord Marchmain, old as fuck, appears back at Brideshead to die. The whole last bit is a debate between Charles (atheist, though he keeps saying agnostic), Julia (Catholic, mostly, more worried about her father’s immortal soul than anything else), and the priest who keeps getting called to do the last rites. Charles rages about the uselessness of priests, the priest agrees that his appearance might actually frighten Lord M to death in and of itself, but still thinks the last rites should be done. Eventually, the priest does his business and Lord M’s final conscious act is making the sign of the cross, upon which Julia chooses Catholicism over a post-divorce-sin-marriage and she and Charles go their separate ways. Remember Sebastian? He doesn’t appear again and I don’t think even gets mentioned.
I think a modern novel would definitely have Sebastian appear at the end while his dad is conscious enough to still be debating who gets the house (it’s Julia, sorry Bridey). But you gotta follow your vision, and this is about Charles’ relationship with the Flytes as just an amorphous whole. Enjoyable!