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An evolving story-line, that is ultimately human and of a time, of a transitional time and also a transitional culture..., but in the end largely about religion... right? This may be a case of high expectations setting a read up for mild disappointment, but also expectations of something that was quite different in themes than the book ultimately centered around (though I think perhaps that had largely to do with me reading things into something that was never there?). A book that should be right up my alley, but somehow slipped away from me - I read this wrong.

The writing is probably near flawless in itself, reflective of the characters and backdrop. I thought this was a book of the love of a man towards another, of the entire Flyte family, and further that of a culture that was ending (or at least turning into something... less?), and I guess maybe that is there, but it felt a bit more like an infatuation with an idea to me, more than of individual true love with any authentic depth.

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

The pacing was excellent, constantly having the reader wanting to know what would happen next, how things would end, but for me it was a slow decent that didn't satisfy and turned back to the subject that my own prejudices probably had me the least interested in - religion. I am not sure what I am to feel about many of the characters, they are all products of their families and their religion or lack there of. There is a constant struggle for some to be individuals and to live a more hedonistic type of life, but religion and guilt keep circling back and by the end what is one to take from this story? Lady Marchmain seemed an enigma, at turns both well-meaning and manipulative; the matriarch, a woman who needled, controlled, but to what ends? I don't know, I feel like I'm left with a surface deep debate of the role religion plays in every facet of our lives, a more English Dostoevskian tale that isn't at all that either.

I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.

It was an enjoyable book that I should probably re-approach with a different mindset at some point, but I am not sure if I will...