Language: English | Category: Novel (Drama) | Audio Book: Not Available

Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles Ryder, including his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle.

The story is told by a friend of Sebastian (Charles Ryder), who met him and became his friend at the University of Oxford. The theme of the book is the action of God’s grace upon a group of distinct and close people: this is the declared, and achieved purpose, by the author himself. The mother is the head of the family, but she fails on holding them together. Having educated her children well, she sees two of them sink in life. The father, who converted to Catholicism to marry her, escapes to Italy, and finds himself a mistress. When his wife dies, he returns to Brideshead, to live the rest of his life, to die in the old mansion. His children (and even Ryder) take care of him. Some of the scenes described are quite harsh, but they describe the real life: for example, the university anarchy, the emptiness of ideas and morals of society, the lives of artists, the parents that leave or ignore their children. The book is very good: not for the weak behaviors of some people, but because they know the doctrine, the moral, and there is a personal effort to be a better person.