Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh · 1945
Waugh's most serious novel, published in 1945. A memory of Oxford, aristocratic beauty, and Catholicism, told from the wreckage of WWII. Charles Ryder's love for Sebastian Flyte and Julia is also a love for a world that no longer exists. The prose is pure and melancholy. The novel argues, controversially, that grace is irresistible.
The case against
Waugh himself winced at this one later, blaming wartime rationing for prose that gorges on wine, architecture, and aristocracy. The first half is seduction; the second is apologetics, marching everyone toward Lord Marchmain's deathbed sign of the cross. If you don't accept that grace operates like a plot device, the ending is a door closing in your face.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
