Subtitle: 'The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'.

The blurb:

'Many of the best English novels are portraits of families.
In 'Brideshead Revisited' Evelyn Waugh narrates the fortunes of the accomplished but eccentric family of Lord Marchmain in a social panorama that ranges from Oxford to Venice.
His dissection of the moral infirmities of 'Society' is as sharp and candid as it was in 'Decline and Fall' or 'Vile Bodies'; but in 'Brideshead Revisited', the longest and most ambitious of his novels, he also reveals a deep concern and sympathy for the dilemma of the individual.

This edition includes an explanatory preface added by the author in 1959.'

This is a paperback edition from Penguin, first published 1962, printed 1982. It says it's the revised edition. The book was first published in 1945.

I've never read anything by Evelyn Waugh but needless to say I have heard about this book, at least, many times. Now I hope I will finally read it. I think it is one of those super famous books one ought to have read, that everybody knows about. As I write this I keep seeing the image of Jeremy Irons flash before my eyes ... :-)

An update will follow once I've read the book.

I bought this book at Pepita, a used book store in Oslo, on Friday, February 9th, 2007. They had a sale - a whole bag full of books for only 100 NOK. Irresistible! I managed to cram 32 - count 'em! 32! - books into my bag. :-D

I'm changing the status of this book to available as I have just gotten hold of it on audiobook (read by Jeremy Irons, of course :-). I'll journal here again when I've listened to it. Now this copy is available for release or whatever. :-)

BTW: This book is #563 on the 1001 Books You Must Read list.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book this summer (I started in early May, and finished on July 6th :-o) - I won't say anything about the audio version here, you can read about it in its own journal:
http://bookcrossing.com/journal/5238300
I'll try to write just about the actual book in this JE.

This was in fact a really good book. It was a little hard to get into, though, for some reason. Maybe because - I felt at least - the narrator's voice is a little distant somehow. Emotionally distant from the events he's describing. Of course many of them happened a long time ago ... and many of them were also painful to him so maybe that's why he chooses to distance himself. Plus, when telling the story, he's a soldier in the Great War. Those dreadful experiences could cause anyone to distance themselves from reality a little, I suspect.

The book tells the story of Charles Ryder who is the son of a very respectable family, but doesn't have a lot of money - either the family fortunes have gone downhill a bit, or his father is an incredible tightwad - and a student at Oxford. He makes a friend at university; the suspiciously sensitive Sebastian Marchmain. His family is totally rich and also totally weird. For one thing, his parents are divorced - his mother lives in England, his father in Venice, they are not on speaking terms. Around the turn of the 20th century this is of course quite shocking. Sebastian also has a gorgeous older sister and an annoying but charming baby sister. Charles is partly shocked by the family and also partly drawn to them. As he gets to know them he grows close to all of them ... and they to him, to the extent that he becomes almost a member of their family.

At first life among the noble Marchmains seems as wonderful as a fantasy. They are as rich and sophisticated as Charles has always wanted to be. But of course reality must intrude sooner or later. And perhaps being considered a member of the family can mean getting somewhat embarrassingly close from time to time ... ?

This book is nowhere near as 'gay-themed' as I had been led to believe. :-) I think the BBC must have done something with it ... ;-) or maybe I'm just not clever enough to read between the lines properly. Maybe I don't have gaydar. :-)

This is basically a familiy drama narrated by someone who is fundamentally an outsider. They treat him as a member of the family - almost - and he does eventually marry into the family, but even so, he is an outside voice throughout. As I said, distant somehow. And the family itself slowly breaks apart as various events take its toll on its members and thus on the family as a whole. Overall a rather saddening book.

Reserved for release at the BookCrossing convention here in Oslo later this month as one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

Convention release!

This book was left over on the book buffet after the Oslo Convention.

Released during the flashmob at the end of the release walk from the convention venue to Vigeland park.