I finished Brideshead Revisited recently, and I guess I'm struggling to understand why people love it so much. I haven't seen the miniseries or any other adaptations, but regularly see the novel come up as one of the best of the 20th century.
I thought the writing was overall excellent, some scenes were very funny, and some of the metaphors were quite lovely.
However, I just found almost every character (excepting Sebastian and Cordelia) utterly unlikeable. Just a lot of terrible people being sad and dramatic about their own choices. Charles is a bizarrely passive figure for a protagonist. Everything in his life just seems to happen to him and he goes along with it. The most action he takes is choosing to fully ignore and abandon his own children (which everyone seems fine with).
I will say that as someone from a non-Christian culture, with admitted bias against the aristocracy and organized religion as a whole, I'm sure I wasn't the target audience. That being said, I've enjoyed plenty of books about upper class families and have been deeply moved in the past by Christian themes of grace and redemption. The ending of Brideshead just fell completely flat to me.
For people who love this book, why? I feel like I'm missing something essential. What was Waugh's overall aim with this novel? I get that characters like Rex and Samgrass were odious on purpose, but were Charles and Julia meant to be so unlikeable, or is that just me? Also, why is every married character having constant affairs? Please help me understand (or commiserate, if it fell short of your expectations as well).
by silpidc