[heidiadonis]

A wonderful read! I highly recommend it if you haven't yet read it. I somehow doubt it.
Spoiler Alert:

I felt very sad while reading this book. It is about a friendship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte as well as about a love between Charles and Julia Flyte. In either case, Charles did not know well, hence was unable to connect with, either person he felt so much affection for. Religion like societal morality ties and holds one to its rules. Charles could not save his troubled friend who had a perpetual weakness to alcohol. Sebastian couldn’t bear his guilty feeling which he lessened with spirits. Of course, there is always something elusive about anyone we think we know. Charles was “adrift at sea” unable to comfort Julia when she lamented, “Nameless and dead, like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had seen her!” over the loss of her religion though it turned out to be only a momentary loss. Charles thought the feelings of guilt “nonsensical or preconditioning from childhood” while their guilt and want of redemption were everything to Julia and Sebastian. With my pessimistic tendency, I fully agree with this quote from the book: “a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace - perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrambled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”

A beautiful poetic quote from the book to light it up a little:

"The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all the opposing slope was already in twilight, but lakes below us were aflame; the light grew in strength and splendour as it neared death, drawing long shadows across the pasture, falling full on the rich stone spaces of the house, firing the panes in the windows, glowing on cornices and colonnade and dome, spreading out all the stacked merchandise of colour and scent from earth and stone and leaf, glorifying the head and golden shoulders of the woman beside me."