Spoilers for the book and movie ahead.

I first read Brideshead Revisited in college. I was attracted to the cover photo of Anthony Andrews standing in front of a big English manor house with a teddy bear, a tie-in with the BBC miniseries. It wasn’t quite the romance I had anticipated. I enjoyed it, but it would be years before I gained the facility to read that kind of early 20th-century British novel. I’m not sure if it’s the style, the unfamiliar cultural references, or both, but I’ve found the language of novels of that era more “foreign” than Shakespearean English or eighteenth or nineteenth century prose. The only novels I’ve abandoned unfinished in recent memory are Parade’s End, A Dance to the Music of Time, and Of Human Bondage.

I fell in love with Brideshead this time around, although I had a much stronger reaction to Charles (how could he leave his kids?) and, surprisingly, more indulgence for the Marchmains’ religious feelings (back then, I was freshly lapsed, which may have colored my views; now the Catholic church seems as toothless as a monster that once lived under my bed). Between then and now, I’ve also read Jude the Obscure, and so Julia’s renunciation of Charles took gravitas from my memory of Sue Bridehead’s heartbreaking repudiation of Jude. (I wondered if Waugh took the name Brideshead from Sue. I came up with this on my own, although a few clicks reveals that I was not the first.) I found a lot of humor in the book this time: Charles’s conversations with his father were priceless, and Bridey, Samgrass, and Anthony Blanche were all terrific comic characters. I had not remembered that Sebastian ended up in Tunisia (although now that I think about it he’s the spitting image of one of my Peace Corps friends). And the gay angle, which was so shocking to me all those years ago, seemed very mild; at least, any sexual relationship between Charles and Sebastian seemed rather behind the point, while the other dynamics of their friendship seemed much more important.

I never saw the BBC series, but I was eager to see the new remake. It was entertaining enough, but the writers had to take some liberties with the story to crunch it into two hours that didn’t do it justice. On the ship, for example, Julia and Charles set eyes on each other and are in bed within five minutes. This doesn’t trouble my morals, but it does eliminate one of my favorite parts of the book, the long storm during which Charles and Julia huddle on deck, watching the swinging doors break free of their restraints. (This bit of imagery made a brief appearance in the film, but was not developed.) This was also evident after Julia and Charles fall in love and return to Brideshead; they confront Rex, argue with Bridey (who appears to be saying he won’t bring his new wife to Brideshead because they have been living in sin there…for the past twenty minutes), and encounter her dying father within the span of a few hours.

The worst change was not a truncation, but an addition. In the movie, Julia accompanies Sebastian and Charles to Venice, and she and Charles share a kiss, witnessed by Sebastian. His resulting epic sulk makes it seem like his downward spiral was due to jealousy. In the book, Sebastian and Charles’s relationship was compromised by the former’s drinking and the latter’s collusion with Lady Marchmain, not by Charles’s sudden heterosexuality. Other than a brief spark over a lit cigarette, he doesn’t really have eyes for Julia until he meets her again on board the ship.

The acting was mostly well done. Matthew Goode— so cute! — was just right as Charles. Emma Thompson was wonderful, as was Michael Gambon. (My friend J. and I have remarked recently that his characters have an alarming tendency to die, to the point where just spotting him on the screen is tantamount to a plot spoiler. He has a doozy of a death scene here.) I thought that Sebastian and Julia were badly cast, though. They just weren’t that charming; I was rooting for Charles to get rid of them.

Now I can’t wait to see the BBC version. I have a long plane flight coming up in a few weeks, and I’m saving it for then.