Brideshead Revisited in Hove

[badgermind]

Just returned from an evening in Hove discussing Brideshead Revisited with the Brighton Book Club. It was good to meet sassygoth24 in real life rather than LJ. With the demands of children and moving house, it's been a long time since I actually finished a novel!

Comments

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

Did you like it? I thought the first half was such a gorgeous love story about the tragedy of being in love with an alcoholic, but I found the last half rather too strongly catholic. But he is one of my favorite authors and, due to the first half, it is one of my favorite books.

[badgermind.livejournal.com]

Yes I did like it, rather to my surprise. In the edition I have the author is quoted as saying "I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language..." and that is what struck me most. I have never been able to tune in to the (literary) catholicism of some writers of that period, particularly Graham Greene, and I did find the novel rather too strongly catholic, as you put it, having myself moved over the years from anglo-catholicism to agnosticism to buddhism to paganism. I thought the peripheral descriptions of army and college life were well done. Reading the second half, I was more struck by the strange interactions of wealth, dysfunctional family relationships and religion...