peppercricket
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Post by peppercricket on Jan 18, 2018 10:21:17 GMT
Penny, Suzanne and I have committed ourselves to reading Evelyn Waugh's classic, (this will be my third attempt), if anyone would like to join us, please do.
My copy is ready to collect at the library, so I'll be all systems go very soon.
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Post by pennyt on Jan 18, 2018 10:26:41 GMT
Penny, Suzanne and I have committed ourselves to reading Evelyn Waugh's classic, (this will be my third attempt), if anyone would like to join us, please do. My copy is ready to collect at the library, so I'll be all systems go very soon. Errkkk... you mean I might have to put this on my Feb list?! Might as well get it over with I guess! (Don't know why I feel reluctant - I read a lot of Waugh in my 20s and thought he was great, but for some reason I avoided this one then, possibly because it's fairly long.) |
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Post by geminii on Jan 18, 2018 10:35:53 GMT
I have my newly acquired 50p copy to hand .. I am poised to swap the heat of Botswana for the streets of Oxford whenever everyone is ready ..  |
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peppercricket
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Batley Townswoman's Guild presents the Battle of Pearl Harbour
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Post by peppercricket on Jan 18, 2018 10:37:16 GMT
No rush Penny. I think get it over with is right though!
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Post by windysisters on Jan 18, 2018 10:47:47 GMT
I won't thanks all the same - we had this at Reading Group a couple of years ago............ I'll reserve my comments until you've all "got it over with"  |
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Post by geminii on Jan 22, 2018 14:34:43 GMT
If Janice is starting today, I might as well do the same .. Will update my progress on GR ..
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Post by geminii on Jan 28, 2018 15:24:23 GMT
I finished yesterday .. enjoyed it so much more than I though I would when I started it .. happy to discuss, if that is the plan .. |
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peppercricket
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Post by peppercricket on Jan 30, 2018 8:36:48 GMT
I am so glad I read this. Maybe it was a book to be read later in life, rather than struggling with it in my 20s. The writing was beautiful and I could imagine it all. It was such a turbulent time of change after WW1.
Didn't expect Sebastian's story.
I'm not a religious person, and there was a part in it that left me rather angry if I'm honest.
Penny's right, none of them were very happy!
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Post by pennyt on Jan 30, 2018 9:04:17 GMT
[Slight spoilers may follow]I'm so glad you enjoyed it at long last, Janice, and I think you're right that it's one for the "more mature" reader (!). To be honest, I think if I'd read this one in my late teens/twenties when I ripped through some of Waugh's other work, it would have made me rather impatient - would the nostalgia for a lost age and way of life have struck such a chord with me then? Would I have been irritated by so many characters apparently sacrificing their happiness to their religion? Or, in some cases, giving up their religion to pursue their happiness and then finding it didn't in fact lie where they thought it would? (Although I enjoyed Graham Greene and his angst-ridden characters' battles with their own faith (or lack of it), so maybe I'm wrong.) But overall I was really struck by how sad and lonely almost all the characters in the book are, with almost all of them (including Charles) ultimately finding their only lasting solace in their faith, it seems. It was here that I had the most trouble with the book: I've said before on here, I think, that to me, as an atheist, religious faith is a like a colour I can't see, but/so I'm always interested in reading explorations of faith. But Waugh doesn't explore faith, not in the way that other famous Catholic convert Graham Greene does in his work. Faith here feels like a sense of duty/tradition mixed with guilt and fear - which isn't a great advert for it. And since that faith seems to hamstring the earthly happiness at least of so many of the characters - except right at the very end with Lord Marchmain's death and Charles's sense of acceptance - I was left feeling they'd been sold a pig in a poke. But then maybe that's because I don't have a shred of faith myself! And like you, Janice, I was really surprised by Sebastian's story - not the impression I'd had at all before reading it (and having never seen the dramatisation). But, even though Sebastian doesn't really feature first-hand after about the first quarter of the book, it's in him that the conflict between the secular and the religious is greatest, isn't it? Charles says somewhere that without his religion, Sebastian would be a happy and healthy man - but he feels obliged somehow to remain in the faith and to abandon his earthly happiness. I did wonder whether it's Sebastian's implied homosexuality which is at the real heart of this conflict within him, and what ultimately drives him over the edge. But again, as I felt with so many of the characters, his fate and his way of reconciling with his faith seemed to me to be a wholly unsatisfactory fudge.
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peppercricket
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Post by peppercricket on Jan 30, 2018 9:20:36 GMT
SPOILERS! Lord Marchmain's death - that was the bit that made me angry. A man who had quite happily given up his religion! Just to assuage their earthly guilt, a priest was summoned to his death bed (against his wishes). And yes, Charles's acceptance. He was so against it all. The last line of rosemary3 review on GR was spot on - "But the Catholic church holds the trump card." |
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Post by pennyt on Jan 30, 2018 9:29:43 GMT
SPOILERS! Lord Marchmain's death - that was the bit that made me angry. A man who had quite happily given up his religion! Just to assuage their earthly guilt, a priest was summoned to his death bed (against his wishes). And yes, Charles's acceptance. He was so against it all. The last line of rosemary3 review on GR was spot on - "But the Catholic church holds the trump card." But Lord M accepts the final sacrament - he clearly was compos mentis enough to refuse at the last moment if he'd wished, and he didn't. And as for Charles... But all that I could have accepted if Waugh had given us even one reason why in each case. That's what was missing. Yes the Catholic Church holds the trump card - but is that fear? Guilt? Or salvation? And if salvation, then what form does that take? Is it just the life everlasting in the hereafter? And if Lord M can gain that salvation through a deathbed reconciliation DESPITE the way he'd lived "in sin", what does that say for Julia, Sebastian etc who renounce their happiness in this life for their faith? |
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peppercricket
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Post by peppercricket on Jan 30, 2018 9:35:40 GMT
I wish he had done!
Yes, that's true, there was no reason to Charles's decision.
All three I imagine. Nothing like being happy in the afterlife, when you can be thoroughly miserable while still on earth.
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Post by geminii on Jan 30, 2018 10:06:30 GMT
[ spoliers ]
This was my first read of Brideshead and of any works by Evelyn Waugh .. I have also watched the TV adaptation, but I am sitting here still trying to decide how the whole experience 'made me feel' ..
Perhaps it was a bit ironic that as there are three clear section to the book, that I probably had three separate feelings during my journey. The first part felt like such hard going, the long and winding sentences, although well written, my brain found it difficult to 'slow down' and focus on each word without completely losing track and having to re-read whole sections .. All I kept seeing in my minds eye was Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews & a teddy bear speeding about in an old open-top car .. and I hadn't got to that bit yet ..
Part two finally arrived and, was a much calmer read, whilst the third part did have too much Catholicism for me .. (I will say here that I am not a religious person, although my lovely Grandad was a devout C of E Christian (Bible reading, church going, daily prayers, saying grace etc.). However, as I get older, I think perhaps he was more 'God-fearing') .. and fear is all I see that the RC faith is based upon ..
I agree that they were not the happiest of families, how the Flytes' separation started wasn't of great import .. It all seemed a very strange state of affairs from the get-go and Charles was of an age and disposition to be influenced into a 'better class' of association .. whilst looking for something to help him avoid his own father, he was dazzled by Sebastian and once drawn in, he could not escape. His behaviour towards Celia made me mad, and I was quite pleased that he didn't have a 'Happy Ever After' with Julia .. Years later, in the Army, instead of an overseas posting, he found himself back at Brideshead ..
Anyway, I was glad when the Book came to an end, but felt that the story didn't ..
I appreciate it was purely from Charles' perspective, but what happened to Sebastian ?? He was initially our point of interest, and I would like to know what happened to Cordelia .. they seemed to be the only characters who lived their lives as they really wanted to ..
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Post by pennyt on Jan 30, 2018 11:15:06 GMT
[ spoliers ]
Anyway, I was glad when the Book came to an end, but felt that the story didn't ..
I appreciate it was purely from Charles' perspective, but what happened to Sebastian ?? He was initially our point of interest, and I would like to know what happened to Cordelia .. they seemed to be the only characters who lived their lives as they really wanted to ..
Hmm... Although Sebastian lived independently of the family, I'm not sure it was living as he really wanted to. He was clearly depressed, an alcoholic, with a strongly self-destructive streak, and although we don't actually see him die surely Cordelia's prediction was right that he would eventually be found dead or dying at the gate of the monastery? Even though he travelled abroad to get away from what he saw as his claustrophobic family and Brideshead "which is where they lived" - NOT home! - he still hadn't escaped them which is why he drank.
And of course he couldn't escape his sexuality. And I think that's what originally attracted Charles to him, rather than his background and what he represented. There are clear hints that the two of them had a relationship - Charles even tells Julia that Sebastian was her "forerunner" and he dwells at length on how much she resembles her brother - and unless there was a sexual attraction between the two of them I couldn't otherwise see for the life of me what Sebastian saw in Charles who to me comes across as pretty dull and conservative, even pretty charmless. But Charles is attracted to women too and is able to lead a "normal" life (by the standards of the time) - Sebastian can't, which is the root of his deep-seated and self-destructive unhappiness.
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peppercricket
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Post by peppercricket on Jan 30, 2018 11:25:41 GMT
Quite liked Cordelia also, and Charles didn't deserve Celia.
Would like to see the adaption now.
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