Seconded!
Your Simpleminded Friend.
I remember it from my first reading 22 years ago as a masterly exhibition of style, a memoir of the sensual pleasures absent from wartime England, and an affirmation that the Faith will survive even the destruction of civilization. Various mysteries about several of the principal characters remained unresolved, at least in my understanding, till quite recently. This past year I re-read the story of Sebastian Flyte, the narrator's lost and mourned best friend.
Sebastian is a beautiful eccentric, noticed and universally loved for his family's captivating charm, which in his case masks a deep but latent holiness. This holiness does not rest easily upon him. Instead, like his father before him, he resists it, fleeing (his family name is "Flyte") into moodiness, alcoholism, and ultimately physical alienation, taking up a demi-monde existence in the company of predators and pathetic hangers-on. His alienation gives him no comfort; indeed it's the cause of great suffering (his first name is "Sebastian", and pin-cushions are a recurring theme in the book). The book explores the various paths followed by Sebastian, his father, and his sister as they return to the Church. The narrator, a popular "society" artist, is an agnostic of lazy and indifferent protestant upbringing. His path to the Faith is through the discovery of genuine beauty, (acquired from his exposure to the Flyte family's extraordinary and intuitive charm), which he learns is far more subtle, complex, and vital than the facile and popular impostures through which his career has flourished.
It's Sebastian himself in whom I'm most interested. Charming, holy, secretive and self-alienating, living a disorderly but increasing Christ-centered life in an exotic city with dubious acquaintances, but suffering all the while.
The book touches on important mysteries. Do yourself a favor and get you a copy.