Brideshead Revisitedby Evelyn Waugh
read: 2020
Time 100 Novels,
Modern Library #80
I've read plenty of books with a protagonist of dubious moral quality:
The Ginger Man,
Money, and
Under the Net come to mind. At first blush, Charles Ryder doesn't dabble in nearly the same level of depravity as the main characters of those works. Yes, he spends much of the novel's first half drunk and spending too much money, and the latter half of the book involves his adultery, but he's functional, prosperous, and well-liked.
The novel's ending makes clear that Charles has something missing, however. He's an avowed atheist and openly mocks the Catholic faith of the Flyte family. But the Flytes, who are on the surface even more flawed than Charles, find some redemption in their faith. Julia essentially commits the same sins as Charles (they have an affair) but she finds purpose in service through Catholicism. Sebastian, long lost abroad in alcoholism, finds some kind of symbiotic relationship with the church in North Africa. Even the physical chapel at Brideshead itself, long shuttered after the family matriarch's death, re-emerges in wartime. Charles will receive no such redemption, and by the novel's end, he knows it.
