“How much braver it would have been if Lord Marchmain and Charles Ryder hadn't both folded at the end, or had there been some regret by Charles that he'd succumbed to the load of bosh he'd forsworn, but it's a wonderful book anyway. Waugh seemed to turn his mind to the very serious work of remembrance and didn't employ his usual mockery or reject all levity to make the book into what might have been a dark, gothic saga (think of Woody Allen's "Interiors"). I suppose he meant the religious reversions to be glorious, but they also seem like a failure of character. Catholicism is the rock beneath Waugh's England, and the feudal order that grew upon it and conferred its obligations to the aristocracy is yet the way things ought to be, no matter how much current generations despoil it. If you can tolerate that in the 21st century, this novel will move you.”
