Brideshead Revisited a romance, as we think of a romance book now? No way.

The book is about Love and how it manifests itself in people’s lives – those who look for it and those who seem to attract it effortlessly, those who deny it and are hurt by it.

It’s an elegy to a kind of life that is largely gone now (even among that set now) written by a homesick man (Waugh) during the depths of WWII when the whole world seemed to be falling apart.

The romance of Charles Ryder and Julia Flyte took place in only one book.

Possession is fabulous.

Sigh, lists like this are what happens when the sample is small.

Angie, who’s still waiting for Cat’s book

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

“I shall forget nothing of what has passed. I have not a forgetting nature. (Forgiving is no longer the question, between us, is it?) You may rest assured I shall retain every least word, written or spoken, and all other things too, in the hard wax of my stubborn memory. Every little thing, do you mark, everything. If you burn these, they shall have an afterlife in my memory, as long as I shall live, like the after-trace of a spent rocket on the gazing retina. I cannot believe that you will burn them. I cannot believe that you will not. I know you will not tell me what you have decided, and I must cease scribbling on, anticipating, despite myself, your never-to-be anticipated answer, always in the past, a shock, a change, most frequently a delight.”

– A.S. Byat, Possession

That book is so good and so romantic that it gives me shivers.

Possession, by A.S. Byatt.

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Possession, by A.S. Byatt. Two scholars discover an ancient love affair.

Yes! Jayne might have been bored to tears but I loved this book to pieces.