![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I seem to be spending a great deal of my bedtime reading lately reading classics of English literature that have been made into BBC miniseries that somehow I never managed to see. Last night I finished reading Brideshead Revisited and I have to say my opinion on it was a little torn.
The book is divided up into two sections. The first section is totally amazing. Within 10 pages I could tell why this was his most famous work. The tale of him at Oxford was fun and interesting, it was humourous, decedant and fun and then it turned into one of the most tragic and realistic stories I've read. His best friend/boyfriend became an alcoholic and it was just a really tragic tale of watching someone you love decay into unending depression and self destruction and be able to do nothing about it. I found it really moving.
The secound half of the book was set 10 years later. Rather than being a young man dealing with adulthood he was now a famous artist, married with children. He had an affair with his ex-boyfriend's sister. While it was interesting to read about their voyage from America and the start of the affair. It just seemed to degenerate into a look at Catholicism and it's views on sex and love. I read that Waugh was converted before writing this novel and it really showed. While he tried to make some interesting points in this secound half it just came across as preachy and smaller than the magnificence that was the first half. I just kept wanting him to see Sebastian again and find out what happened to him. When we eventually did find out it was tragic, and made the rest of the story just seem irrelevant.
It's odd how one part of a story can be so gripping and meaningful and the rest so not. But Waugh's writing style had definitely seemed to mature. His characters seemed to have a much more active role in the plot as opposed to earlier works when things just happened to them and they were tossed around with no say or motives. Unfortunately the big step that the narrator made in leaving Sebastian and going on with the rest of his life made the book less interesting. Though I suppose it also made him much more human.
I do want to read more of Waugh's work though. And maybe his brother's too, who I hear writes more of an openly homosexual novel. I couldn't believe that it took me a 100 pages to realise there was more than friendship between the two main characters. I usually pick up on that so quickly.
But a very good book nonetheless I think. I suppose I shall now have to rent the miniseries.
The book is divided up into two sections. The first section is totally amazing. Within 10 pages I could tell why this was his most famous work. The tale of him at Oxford was fun and interesting, it was humourous, decedant and fun and then it turned into one of the most tragic and realistic stories I've read. His best friend/boyfriend became an alcoholic and it was just a really tragic tale of watching someone you love decay into unending depression and self destruction and be able to do nothing about it. I found it really moving.
The secound half of the book was set 10 years later. Rather than being a young man dealing with adulthood he was now a famous artist, married with children. He had an affair with his ex-boyfriend's sister. While it was interesting to read about their voyage from America and the start of the affair. It just seemed to degenerate into a look at Catholicism and it's views on sex and love. I read that Waugh was converted before writing this novel and it really showed. While he tried to make some interesting points in this secound half it just came across as preachy and smaller than the magnificence that was the first half. I just kept wanting him to see Sebastian again and find out what happened to him. When we eventually did find out it was tragic, and made the rest of the story just seem irrelevant.
It's odd how one part of a story can be so gripping and meaningful and the rest so not. But Waugh's writing style had definitely seemed to mature. His characters seemed to have a much more active role in the plot as opposed to earlier works when things just happened to them and they were tossed around with no say or motives. Unfortunately the big step that the narrator made in leaving Sebastian and going on with the rest of his life made the book less interesting. Though I suppose it also made him much more human.
I do want to read more of Waugh's work though. And maybe his brother's too, who I hear writes more of an openly homosexual novel. I couldn't believe that it took me a 100 pages to realise there was more than friendship between the two main characters. I usually pick up on that so quickly.
But a very good book nonetheless I think. I suppose I shall now have to rent the miniseries.