In a little while, just a little while...

A couple years ago I bought a journal from Ex Libris Anonymous as a gift for a friend who was expecting. The good people at E.L.A. make journals out of discarded old books, leaving a few key pages of the original inside along with the blank paper. The book I bought was Mother and Baby Care in Pictures by Louise Zabriskie, RN, a sort of proto-What to Expect when You're Expecting published in 1935 (this edition was from the '40s). I spent some time browsing before I wrapped it up for my pregnant friend, and it was so terrific I found myself wishing they'd left more pages intact. Although this review of the book from 1935 suggests that I should be grateful to have missed pages 68-71. Imagine, giving people detailed information on what the labor and delivery process involves! That might fly with your "younger generation," but no "old family doctor" would stand for it. Parents-to-be should be either zonked on drugs or barred from the hospital entirely, the way God intended.

I had a feeling I'd find this book helpful someday, so I scanned a few illustrations for future reference. And now that my own pregnancy is nearly at an end -- and by that I mean the baby is arriving tomorrow -- let's take a moment to see how I've done.

Into the words

I got Stephen Sondheim's book Finishing the Hat for Christmas (obvs), and I spent a lot of that snowed-in vacation reading it. But I didn't feel moved to attempt a full on review, because it strikes me as a fans-only sort of book. You know if you'll like it. You'll like it if you think you will. Just having an authorized print edition of all these lyrics is a treat; the commentary (and the memorabilia) is a bonus. But I wouldn't bother recommending the book to someone who wasn't already convinced of Sondheim's significance and at least somewhat familiar with the shows included. I don't know what such a person would get out of it, especially without the music to go along with the words -- better to listen to a few cast albums. And as a book, it's not a masterpiece -- it's interesting but repetitive, not as tightly conceived or edited as it could have been. A candy store for a fan, and I'll be in line for the next volume, naturally. But I'm not sure non-fans should feel compelled to pay attention.

I was surprised, then, by all the serious reviews of Finishing the Hat I saw, and by how they continued to trickle out throughout the spring. I was finally moved to write about it myself by reading Judith Flanders's take in the Times Literary Supplement.

First, she says this, which I think is just right:

[I]t is a partial autobiography of a life in the theatre told in the interstices of a very useful – and enjoyable – collection of his lyrics, combined with introductions and running commentaries telling us why a song didn’t work, or why a replacement did. This part of the book is a revelation and a pleasure, setting out Sondheim’s beliefs and principles, and outlining, in a way academics mostly fail to do, how a show actually works.

There were places I wished he'd said more, and places where I disagreed with his judgment (I will never be convinced that the rewritten Merrily We Roll Along is, overall, an improvement on the admittedly flawed original). But I found it fascinating -- as I think any fan would.

Flanders also pinpoints the reason Finishing the Hat left me with a sour taste:

Me in the Guardian

Just wanted to let you know that I've been published on the Guardian's website. Here is my answer to the question, "Is the Catholic abuse scandal over?" based on the latest John Jay report (which is a long and dry but frequently fascinating read). Seeing my writing translated into British punctuation and spelling is the fulfillment of a dream I didn't even know I had. I believe the proper term for how I'm feeling is "chuffed."

In other what-I've-been-working-on news: I have a review of the new J. Courtney Sullivan novel, Maine, in the just-published June 3 Commonweal. Those of you discerning enough to subscribe can read it here. (Short version: I liked it.)

Catherine, in several convenient locations

If you subscribe to Commonweal -- and for goodness's sake, why wouldn't you? You can get 6 months' worth for just $17! -- you can read my review of Don Brophy's biography Catherine of Siena: A Passionate Life in our latest issue. St. Catherine is one of my very favorite saints and has had my back for some time now, so I was delighted to get this assignment and pleased to be able to recommend the book. It was also nice to have a chance to complain about the prayer card I picked up at her tomb in Rome, which referred to her possessing "the particular privilege of virginity and of patience" but left out some of her more notable, less passive qualities.

I mention at the beginning of the review that Catherine's head is in Siena, along with a thumb, while her body lies in Rome. Turns out my inventory wasn't quite complete, as I noted in a follow-up blog post today at dotCommonweal. (You don't have to subscribe to read that.) Looks like I need to go to Venice!

Loose rei[g]ns

I've noticed typos here and there in The New Yorker over the past year or so. At first I brushed aside the conclusion that things are getting looser over there; perhaps I'm just getting better at this, I thought. (You don't turn off the error-detecting software when you're out of the office.) I try not to freak out too much about the impending Death of Print Journalism, for obvious sanity-preserving reasons. But then, in the December 13 issue, two mistakes in the same article! This is alarming. Are there any full-time copy editors and proofreaders left at Conde Nast?

The article, for those of you playing along at home, was John Lahr's profile of Elia Kazan, "Method Man." On page 91, third column, a missing close-quote:

it was Kazan, newly promoted from stage manager to actor, who shouted the play’s famous last lines—“Strike! Strike!! Strike!!!—which became the battle cry of the thirties.

And on page 93, first column, the true mark of a copy editor asleep at the switch: homophone confusion!

Kazan’s straight talk cajoled, provoked, cudgelled; it kept Williams on narrative track and reigned in his lyrical excess.

And I was able to copy and paste both of those from The New Yorker's website, where they still haven't been corrected. O tempora! O mores!

Meanwhile, the December 20 & 27 issue is one of those double issues I spend half as much time reading. It feels like half the staff is already on vacation and the other half wishes they were. First of all, Ian Frazier is peerless and wonderful, but these lame "Cursing Mommy" pieces -- does anybody find them funny? And we also get a bonus not-funny "humor" piece, "Santaleaks" -- really? Also, am I the only one who noticed that the cartoons on page 54 and page 68 are the same joke? In both, someone is about to be executed. Page 54 caption: "His highness is changing his relationship status." Page 68 caption: "I'm about to enter an area of poor reception." (Technological phrases in incongruous settings, am I right?!) At least put them in different issues.

However, you will doubtless be pleased to know that this same issue has a feature article by our old friend John Colapinto. It is a work of breathtaking and unquestionable genius. I haven't read it. So time-saving to know I needn't bother! (P.S. If you haven't seen that old post, or it's been a while, you really ought to check it out again. The entertainment value never wanes.)

P.S. Speaking of works of genius, you can read my review of Gary Shteyngart's novel Super Sad True Love Story in the latest Commonweal -- but only if you subscribe.

Slightly imperfect

I've actually been keeping up with my New Yorker reading lately (the double issues always help me catch up, since they're twice as long but half as interesting as a normal issue, and then I get a week off). Skipping the stuff I know I'll hate is helping me pick up the pace, and not stopping to blog about that or anything else has been helpful as well. But this week I blogged not once but twice at dotCommonweal about various features of the August 2 issue. First, I recommended Atul Gawande's excellent article about death and health care. And today I picked on some aggressively secularist posturing in the "Briefly Noted" section, along with a less disdainful but similarly clueless Bible reference in an earlier issue.

I'm hoping I don't need to explain what's funny about that last one to the audience over at dotComm, but for those who haven't visited a religious bookstore lately, let me clarify: the NRSV Bible is a translation, not a specific print edition. (Wikipedia puts it this way: "The New Revised Standard Version...is a thorough revision of the Revised Standard Version.") It comes in all shapes and sizes, the way Bibles do. So describing something as "about the size of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible" (as Meghan O'Rourke does) sounds knowing and specific, but is actually very vague.

Nox, according to Amazon.com, is 9.1 x 6 x 2.6 inches. So there are some editions of the NRSV that are about the same size. Perhaps it was this imitation leather "award Bible" O'Rourke had in mind? Or, if you wanted to get really specific, you might say it's about the size of a New King James Version Precious Moments ® Small Hands Edition Bible, available "slightly imperfect" from ChristianBook.com. I did not know it was possible to purchase a "slightly imperfect" Bible. The very idea seems slightly blasphemous―and yet, I would say a Precious Moments ® Bible is "slightly imperfect" by definition. Score one for truth in advertising.

Salinger

One of the great things about working for a magazine with an 85-year history is our vast and fascinating archives. I haven't read much J. D. Salinger (just The Catcher in the Rye in high school, like everybody else), but I knew Commonweal must have published lots of interesting articles about him over the years. I spent this afternoon digging up and posting two of the best, and if you're a fan of Salinger, midcentury fiction writing, or snappy literary criticism, I encourage you to check them out. Just go here and follow the links to find out what critics had to say about Salinger in 1957, and what occasioned this fabulous sentence in 1963: "And then there is Mary McCarthy, thumbing her nose in a kind of bitchy pique."

Based on a novel by a man named Lear

Over at Hey Dullblog -- the occasionally updated group blog for Fab Four fans and obsessives -- you will find my thoughts on the twin Beatle-bio reviews in this week's New York Times Book Review. Nellie McKay decided to make her contribution, a review of the latest Lennon bio, interesting by writing a la In His Own Write. Do you think she pulled it off?

Suzanne Vega took on the new McCartney bio, which sounds pretty lousy. I quoted a few lines from her, too, in my Dullblog post, but I wanted to bring this bit over here, given Restricted View's history with disappointing Macca-related journalism.

One line about McCartney, which reads like a comment from a rejected suitor, reveals the possible source of this disappointment: “He grants interviews to bloggers and alternative weeklies, even as he turns away some major magazines (and biographers).” Perhaps the author made a bid for his subject’s cooperation but was turned down.

Seems pretty likely. And yet, is the author's description of Sir Paul's media policy accurate in a general sense? Not unless The New Yorker is an alternative weekly. He gave their writer a lot of access, you may recall. Based on the rest of Vega's review, I don't think he turned down the chance to participate in the making of this book just because he was feeling anti-mainstream.

I'm no Alan Greenspan

"When I bought The Fountainhead, I remember being impressed by how light — literally lightweight — the book was, despite its tremendous thickness. If I were a character in an Ayn Rand novel, that impression would have been symbolic. But since I’m not, I’m forced to admit that the book sucked me in...."

Read all about my not-quite-full-blown Ayn Rand phase at dotCommonweal, along with a roundup of excellent review-essays in response to the two newly published biographies of Ms. Rand.

Birthday Book, part four

We have come to the final page of my birthday book -- and, as you can see, Connor saved the best for last.


This makes me laugh each and every time I look at it. Everything about it is awesome -- the gills! The blunt top fin! The way it emerges from the left margin! The upward-slanting caption! But I think the yellow, different-sized eyes are my very favorite part.

Birthday Book, part three

On the third page, Connor broke from the animal theme to do a portrait of me. I don't care to inquire about the not-so-subtle echoes between this page and the PIG drawing on the previous page.


My hair is particularly short (and a little patchy) because this was created just about a year after I finished chemotherapy. "You're wearing one of those shirts with no sleeves that you wear," Connor told me when he presented the book to me. I really don't wear tank tops that often, but obviously my muscular upper arms made an impression. (Part one here. Part two here.)

Recommended reading

The new "Fall Books" issue of Commonweal has my review of Mary Karr's new memoir, Lit. Do check it out.

(Following this interruption we will return to your regularly scheduled posting of pictures from my birthday book.)

Birthday Book, part two

My nephew was, and is, a lover of animals (an "animal expert," as he once put it), so the subject matter of my birthday book was pretty much a given. As you can see, he drew the animals with loving attention to detail. This one is helpfully labeled:


I love the concentric circles that form his crazy eyes. And of course his little blue hooves. And the nose! It's almost cubist. Part three coming soon...

Birthday Book, part one

For my birthday two years ago, my then-almost-five-year-old nephew made me a book. It's been on our coffee table ever since, but the colors are fading rapidly, because he drew it using those "Color Wonder" markers that only work on certain kinds of paper. Good for avoiding messes; bad for archival purposes. Since the book is too precious to lose, we decided to make a digital copy, which means I can now share the book with all of you. The husband scanned it and then I increased the contrast to bring out the many different colors, an important element of the artwork (notice how many times he switched markers!). That's also why the paper looks so blotchy and yellow, by the way.

So, this is the cover -- click to see it bigger.


The artist explained it all to me at the time. I believe that's an octopus up top -- note the suckers on his many legs. There's a very detailed "X-ray fish" in the center, and a jellyfish (with a sideways smile) in the bottom left corner. He also wrote his address here on the first page, so either that's the title or he's combined the title and copyright pages. (I scribbled out the street number to protect his privacy, but I can tell you at least one of the digits is backward.) As for the part in blue, my sister told me he asked her, "Mom, how do you spell 'to'?" And then, before she could answer, he said, "...Oh, 'two'!" And so he wrote "2MOLLIE," Prince-style.

Stay tuned for the next page... And in the meantime, you can visit the Mother Load blog for more of Connor's excellent work.

It's true what they say about Dan Brown

He really is a terrible writer, in the most basic sense of the word. That's what I've learned from the Telegraph's list of 20 awful sentences from the collected works of Dan Brown. (I blogged about it at dotCommonweal too.) It doesn't get much worse than this:

Deception Point, chapter 8: Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes.

Tom Chivers is correct in noting, "It’s not clear what Brown thinks ‘precarious’ means here." And that's just the beginning of the reasons that sentence is laugh-out-loud bad. In fact, in most cases the commentary from Chivers is unnecessary -- and given the apparent richness of the material, the list is probably not as good as it could have been. (The bit at the end about how "Da Vinci wasn't Leonardo's last name" is particularly weak. There's no need to get pedantic about that when we're dealing with a writer who thinks "precarious" can modify "body.") But there's still enough to make lovers of the language grind their teeth. And to encourage me to stick to my practice of not reading anything by Dan Brown ever.

A secretary is not a toy

Today's NYT has an op-ed by Chiara Volpato (professor of social psychology at the University of Milan) complaining about the outrageously sexist behavior of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. I know what you're thinking: if Italian women didn't like being sexually harrassed, why were they born in Italy? For real, though, this woman has a point. She has also won the award for the most wonderful sentence in today's Times -- part of a list of Berlusconi's recent exploits:

He designated a former model with whom he had publicly flirted to be Minister of Equal Opportunities.

Isn't that just too perfect? It's almost hard to be mad at the guy. It reminds me of how the upper management on Are You Being Served? always surrounded themselves with comically busty young ladies who serviced them as "secretaries" and "nurses." Minister of Equal Opportunities. I love it. (If you want an even more obscure British comedy reference, it's like in Yellowbeard when they're introducing the officers on the ship, and one of them is a shapely young woman with a very unconvincing false mustache whom they call "Mr. Prostitute". This is both hilarious and historically accurate.)

The other thing that makes it hard for Volpato to get her point across is the stiff English -- it's perfectly fluent, but it has that unmistakable nonnative feel. I'm actually rather fascinated by it, because when I try to pick out a particularly awkward sentence, I have trouble explaining just exactly why it doesn't work. It's all grammatical, but it just doesn't sound right.

At the same time, the sexism portrayed on TV reinforces chauvinistic ideas among the culturally weakest parts of the population. Researchers who study female body objectification need only look to Italy to witness the sad consequences of this phenomenon.

See? It's just... not right. Also not-quite right: the graphic that accompanies this piece. The clawlike lady's hand reaching up out of -- a plate of spaghetti? Aren't we trying to defeat Italian-culture stereotypes here? And why does that hand look like something from a horror movie? When I was a kid I read an illustrated version of the R.D. Blackamore novel Lorna Doone just because it had an illustration much like that one near the end. It looked really gruesome and cool. (Someone dies in a marshy fen, I think, suffocated by mud.) It makes me curious about this opinion piece, too, but in a different way. I think it may be an op-ed-art misfire.

P.S. Jason Linkins at Eat the Press had a similar reaction.

Grounds for impeachment

A few weeks back I crossed a major item off my to-do list: I backed up my computer, including my mp3s, on an external hard drive. My previous laptop died pretty suddenly, taking with it all sorts of files I don't need but was sorry to lose. And that was before I'd started using iTunes. So, as the present one reaches middle-age, I decided it was high time I prepared for the worst.

In the process I also expanded my music collection a bit, because registering the hard drive with the manufacturer scored me some free Emusic downloads. Sweet! The deal included one audiobook. Now, I've never been an audiobook person -- I like my books on paper. (Although I can imagine I'd adapt if I spent a lot of time in a car.) But this seemed like the perfect opportunity to check out something I've wanted to read but haven't been motivated enough to buy: Barack Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father. During the election I was so busy trying to tune out all the nonsense about how Obama was a foreign-born secret Muslim that I didn't really learn many actual, true details about his background. I had heard, though, that this book was good, and furthermore that he actually wrote it himself, so I was curious. It seemed like a good audiobook choice, because I wasn't expecting it to be such a literary masterpiece that it would be diminished in the transition from written to spoken word. And because, by the same token, I probably wouldn't mind that it was "abridged." And finally, and maybe most important, because it was read by Obama himself. With most politicians that would be a liability, but Obama -- what can I say? The man has a very nice voice.

One of the reasons I like books-on-paper is that you can find out when they were published, what edition you're reading, etc. Since I didn't have a copyright page, or even a box, to consult, I had no idea when exactly this book was written or when the audio version (read by Obama himself) was recorded. I just jumped in, and when I hit "play," the first track turned out to be a preface, for an updated edition, explaining the circumstances under which Obama wrote the book. In his signature syncopated rhythm, Obama explains that he was receiving a lot of media attention, because "I was the first African-American president..." He paused just long enough for me to do a double-take: When did he have time to record this?! -- before he finished the thought: "...of the Harvard Law Review." Oh.

As it turns out, he wrote the book just after graduating from law school, and recorded the audio version while he was a senator. It's obvious he didn't spend a lot of time preparing for his recording session: he reads with his usual bumpy rhythms, but often he begins a sentence without seeming to know where it will end. It's hard to explain in writing, but you probably know what I mean -- regular churchgoers will be familiar with this phenomenon as demonstrated by the lector-who-hasn't-prepared. (It's particularly noticeable when someone is struggling through a cold read of one of St. Paul's epic sentences.) Sometimes, as I listen, I get distracted thinking about how writing-for-reading differs from writing-for-speaking, and how inflection can be used to indicate punctuation when you're reading from a book. That's another problem with audiobooks, at least for me: my mind wanders and I forget I'm supposed to pay attention. With real books you can at least go back to the top of the page without too much hassle!

As I've noted, Mr. Obama is a particularly visible president, at least compared to his predecessor. He's always giving a speech about something -- and in these worrisome times, people are actually interested enough to listen. So we're all getting used to hearing his voice every time we turn on the television or radio. And it's a little surreal for me to hear that same voice in my ear when I'm cooking, or riding a bus down Riverside Drive... Except, instead of delivering a frank but confident assessment of the economy or foreign policy, he's telling me about his boyhood in Indonesia and his pet monkey.

I hadn't yet gotten to Obama's high-school years, and his friendship with "Ray," when the Boston Phoenix posted these audio snippets from Dreams from My Father (which I learned about via Wonkette). In context (as I learned when I finally listened long enough), the conversations between "Barry" and "Ray" lead to a sensitive, candid and truly edifying discussion of how experiences of racism and questions about racial identity figured into Obama's adolescence. But out of context, the Ray dialogue generates some hilarious soundbites. Which brings us to the Phoenix's brilliant idea to edit and post some clips. The framing device is kind of lame. The audio editing is sometimes sloppy (which makes the clips less funny). But, in the end, what you have is a downloadable mp3 of the 44th president saying, for example, "Sure you can have my number, baby." (Not to mention other hilarious, less family-friendly things.) And that's something I think we can all appreciate.

Don't criticize what you can't understand

I never really had strong feelings about New Yorker film critic David Denby, as some subscribers do. He was less entertaining than Anthony Lane, but not unreadable; and yes, he was occasionally out of his depth, but aren't they all? If he'd been writing about theatre perhaps I'd have been more sensitive to his shortcomings, but his movie reviews never really rubbed me the wrong way.

I recently saw his new book Snark in an advance-copies-for-review pile and I rolled my eyes: another writer tries to stretch half of an idea into a book-length Comment on Modern Culture. No thanks. The "pseudo-scholarly take on a pop-culture 'trend'" angle was especially unappetizing. I don't want to hear that particular lecture from anybody, but especially not from Denby. Although, as I said, I never had a strong reaction to his work in general, I had a dim memory that he was a writer whose insightfulness diminished as his subject broadened. That is, writing about one particular film, he did okay; writing long articles about the Meaning and History and Future of Film in Our Culture, as I remember him doing once or twice, he seemed sloppy with his "argument" and generally out of touch. (I think I hated this one, but I don't want to bother rereading it to recall the specifics.) Certain paragraphs and sentences still had the ring of truth within them, but the way they were strung together seemed false and tin-eared, inclined to generalize in unsupportable ways.

So I guessed from all that that Snark would be an unsatisfying, probably irritating read. But this Wonkette post -- about his attempt to take on Wonkette -- is really pretty horrifying. I'm actually embarrassed for David Denby.

I know it's not for everyone's tastes, but I love Wonkette, which I discovered belatedly toward the end of this election season. It got me through those last couple months, and it continues to help me cope with knowing that, for example, Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd and Bill Kristol and Richard Cohen and other such columnists are out there, and other people take them seriously. (That Noonan takedown makes me laugh every time I think about it. On the other hand, the very fact that Denby apparently describes Dowd as "the most gifted writer of snark in the country" is conclusive evidence that he has no clue what he's talking about.) Wonkette is the only place I can stand to read about the Blagojevich Affair. And the reader comments actually add value, which is a rare and impressive achievement. The funny thing is, Denby isn't off-base when he describes the site as "proudly idiotic." That captures something central to what they're doing over there. He just doesn't get how that approach is functioning -- how it manages to be crude and smart at the same time. The crudeness of the approach points out how crass the level of "serious" and "mainstream" political coverage and discourse actually is. When provoked enough, the Wonkette editors will explain that (much better than I just did), and it's impressive to me how thoroughly they understand what they're doing.

I wouldn't have expected the nuances of "snark" as employed at Wonkette to be apparent or appealing to Denby -- if we were friends, I wouldn't be sending him links to my favorite posts. And his not getting it would be fine, except that he's apparently so certain he does. And that's embarrassing. Normally Wonkette's post titles are (proudly!) hyperbolic, but in this case, "The 'Wonkette Part' of David Denby's Book Really Just A Bunch of Major, If Not Libelous, Errors" is accurate. Quite an achievement.

I'm not convinced that "snark" and its effect on "our conversation" is analyzable, or worth analyzing. But if you want to read more on the topic, read Adam Sternbergh's review of Denby's book in New York magazine. It's the only review I'd bother to read, because Sternbergh -- of the late, lamented Fametracker team, part of TWoP's extended family -- knows whereof he speaks. He's convinced me "snark" might be worth analyzing after all, if it's done by someone who knows what it is and how it works. "Snark is not a honk of blasé detachment; it’s a clarion call of frustrated outrage." Couldn't have said it better myself -- but then, I keep forgetting! I'm a blogger and not a writer.

Why do men then now not reck his rod?

If you haven't yet subscribed to Commonweal, you haven't seen my review of the new(ish) novel Exiles, by Ron Hansen, which was published in the October 10 issue (and available online only to subscribers). The title of the review, "How Fiction Fails," works better when you see it in the context of the magazine -- it follows a review of James Wood's How Fiction Works. But I'm afraid it's apt, even if the joke doesn't come through. I thought I would love this one -- a novel about Gerard Manley Hopkins (one of my favorite poets) and the shipwreck that inspired his most ambitious work! Promising premise. Disappointing execution. A sample of my take:

Hopkins, too, is a less inspiring hero than his poems suggest, but this is due to Hansen’s reluctance to invent where the record is silent. An anxious “author’s note” declares, “Care has been taken not to contradict biographical details or historical testimony.” The result is a novel with too much fact and not enough fiction, a story told by a narrator on less-than-familiar terms with his characters. We study Hopkins from a disorientingly uncertain and limited point of view, granted access to the poet-priest’s interior life only through excerpts from his actual correspondence.
...Late in the novel, after Hopkins’s priestly service has been all but spent in a series of inglorious assignments, Hansen allows himself, and us, to “imagine it otherwise,” outlining the life a more orthodox theologian or single-minded author might have had. It is the one true taste of fiction in an otherwise unimaginative recital of history.

Still, I enjoyed having a good reason to tackle "The Wreck of the Deutschland" again. And I am kind of excited about this forthcoming Hopkins biography...

Will this upstart critic ever like anything? Only time will tell!

Brideshead, reviewed

I reviewed the new film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited for Commonweal, and you can read my take on the magazine's website now! At last you will know the source of that whirring sound you've been hearing all summer: it's just Evelyn Waugh spinning in his grave.

...Inspiration is ultimately where the film founders -- it can’t be faithful to the novel’s plot while rejecting its notions of faith. Suffering and holiness, sin and redemption: these are Waugh’s themes, expressed imperfectly and embodied ambivalently by his characters, and resisted by his narrator almost to the end. Jarrold reshapes Brideshead as a fairy tale of doomed romance, an exercise in cliché in which boy meets girl but strenuously resists meeting God.

This may be the only review you'll find that contains extensive analysis of the film's religious imagery -- and not a single comparison to the 1981 BBC serial. Go on and read it.

Also, film fans, don't miss Mother Load's breathless account of a brush with a certain celebrity mommy and her named-after-fruit preschooler!