※5年ほど前に別のサイトで書いたレビューです。5年前とはだいぶ自分の考えも変わっているかもしれませんが、レビューは当時のままです。文法や表現のおかしいところも修正しておりません(^_^;)

Brideshead Revisitedは思い入れのある作品なのでまた何度でも読みたいです。

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This was a re-read for me. I read it for the first time about 2 years ago. I am glad it meant a lot more to me than the last time. So I am going to note them here for myself.

My professor recommended this book two years ago. To be honest, I found it a bit daunting back then just because it seemed to have a lot to do with religion. I hardly knew anything about it, having been brought up in a not so religious family. So the latter half of the novel was a bit of hasty reading back then. As a result,all I remembered was a teddy bear and too much drinking, really. But now, my copy of Brideshead Revisited is full of I-love-this-quote sticky notes. Hopefully that explains how much I enjoyed it this time.

Re-reading this novel was absolutely worth it because I noticed how much the way I read has changed over the past two years. In retrospect, I used to read fiction to simply follow the plot in the novel. Reading was more about facts/events in the story than about relatability. I was almost distancing myself from the characters in the book instead of trying to put myself in their shoes. It did not matter what motivated a character to make a certain action. I just wanted to get a bit of excitement out of books, which I think is one way of reading anyway. My reading experience has got a little more self-reflective. Now I do try to relate. In my view, the true joy of reading a book like this, which is quite boring in the way it is not that action-packed, is to slip into those weak parts of yourself that you wouldn’t usually admit exist, and then connect them with someone else’s in the story.

There was one particular quote that I found really relatable: “Sometimes,I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.” (Reading this sentence gave me one of those moments when you realise other people, like the characters in the novel and the authors who wrote it, are just like you and you are not the only one feeling like this and that.) As I grow up, I find it a bit harder to be in the moment, something I used to do without being conscious when I was little. You are doing okay and there is nothing to be worried about the present, and yet sometimes you find yourself trying so hard to be in the moment, almost as though clinging to your former carefree self, but then you cannot help but feel that the act of trying is already ruining the moment. It is like you are living in the past as well as constantly worrying about the future yet to come. That is how I interpreted the quote anyway, and it told me that it is only natural to feel like that. I am not being negative at all here though. Anyway, the way Charles describes his memories things with carefully chosen words convinced me that it is a good experience to reflect on the past.

・The writing style was beautiful. It sounds like a cliché, but it really is better than it sounds. It’s just that I cannot find other words to describe it. It is true that some of the metaphors were quite hard for me to figure out, in which case, I had to rely on my Japanese translation copies. Nevertheless, I am glad that I did stick to them because Evelyn Waugh’s descriptions are so … erm, precise? It is like you can have an exact picture of every character and place. I especially liked the way Julia was described.

・One of the reasons I did not enjoy the book at first was that I expected it to be a story about the friendship between Charles and Sebastian. So when the story became more about other characters like Julia and less about Sebastian as it went on, I was a bit disappointed. Now I think one of the themes that frame the story is memory as Charles says himself. The friendship with Sebastian is just part of it, not the entire thing, which makes more sense to me.

・Another favourite quote (Just writing it down here)

“But as I drove away and turned back to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind,and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.”

I am definitely going to reread it sometime in the future, maybe in my 30s, 40s and 50s and I’ll see how I feel about it.

P.S. Reading this review again before uploading it to make sure there are as less grammatical mistakes as possible. I am beginning to feel it’s totally pointless now, but I’m going to upload it anyway…

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以上、5年前のレビューの再掲でした。