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Jan 23, 2011

Kelly rated it:

"But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature. And a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort that we are to have for a companion so guileless and good natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather too short than otherwise and her More...

13 comments like (30 people liked it)

Mar 27, 2011

Sandybanks rated it:

Spoilers!

Miss Rebecca Sharp's Guide to the Regency Society

1. If a young lady is not born into either rank or fortune, she will be looked down upon by good society and forced to exist in a humiliating dependency on others for life, unless the said young lady is willing, nay, not merely willing, but most strenuously strive to improve her situation.

2. If the said young lady, despite being a poor orphan, happens to have the good fortune of being More...

17 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Emily rated it:

I realize that I'm not making friends here by only giving what is considered a masterful piece of literature what amounts to a "meh" review but that's really how I felt about this book.

On a small scale, I thought the writing was too long-winded. This is not a fancy story and it could have been told more concisely. I was mostly bored reading it.

On a bigger scale, I had serious issues with the heroine. Rebecca is the type of woman who has always made my stomach c More...

9 comments like (19 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Suna rated it:

This is unprecendented: I'm giving this four stars before I've finished.

Aside from the much lauded razor sharp wit, cutting social observations and poetically despicable characters, gems like this elevate this book above others for its sheer all encompassing timelessness:

He lived comfortably on credit. He had a large capital of debts, which laid out judiciously, will carry a man along for many years, and on which certain men about town contrive to live a hundred times better More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 05, 2010

Christopher rated it:

Here I am, 54 years old, and for the very first time reading William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair. "Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero." I disagree with Thackeray. The 'Hero' of Vanity Fair is the steadfast and stalwart William Dobbin; of that there is no doubt. This novel is not the coming of age, or bildungsroman, of Becky Sharp. No, Miss Rebecca Sharp sprang from the womb enlivened with her desire to claw her way to the top. She can't help it, and nor should she; is she More...

1 comment like (17 people liked it)

Jun 26, 2011

Jessica rated it:

First things first: Don't get this edition! I recently attended my college reunion. Whilst ambling idly around the green lawns of that hallowed institution, I had chance to encounter my most distinguished and beloved professor of English. Exalted that I happened to be dandling Thackeray's baby on my knee (instead of the glossy monthly version of Vanity Fair, as is more common with me), with sparkling eyes and an enchanting smile I thrust my copy before his erudite and discerning nose. "My f More...

10 comments like (16 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2007

Russell rated it:

Thackeray's opus is a wonder. Long, yes, but so very good in so many ways.

He's part Oscar Wilde, part Jonathan Swift, with a dash of Dickinson, but all his own voice.

Since the story is so long and sprawling, I only jotted down a few notes on my impressions.

* He breaks the 4th wall, some times with savage glee, yanking it down making you look at yourself and the characters in a new light. Other times he does it with delicacy, sliding back the wall and making y More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2008

Emily rated it:

This book quickly became on of my all-time favorites. I was surprised that I was never assigned the book in college, but a few years ago I realized that it was one of those titles that any self-respecting Anglophile should have on their shelf. The story starts out rather slowly, but you suddenly realize that you're 150 pages in and are completely engrossed! I enjoy how different the novel is from everything else you would expect to read from the time period (with the exception of Tristram Shan More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2011

Lisa rated it:

This is one of the few books I read for high school English classes that I didn't love. I detested it, actually. My lack of enjoyment reading this book is probably, in part, because I had to read it for an advanced English Shakespeare class. The teacher decided to add this book to our reading list, otherwise consisting of many of William Shakespeare's brilliant plays, which I loved. I couldn't feel any empathy with Becky Sharp and didn't like a thing about her. I'd like to think that if I read t More...

9 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2008

Bonnie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Taylor rated it:

There are more than 800 pages in this book. I attempted it many times, each time losing track somewhere in the middle. I finally read it out of pure spite -- no way was I going to let some snotty 800-page classic get the better of me! It was okay, and I certainly have the literary acumen to understand why it is a remarkable piece of literature. Regardless, I think Thackery could have done the story justice in half the pages.

But really, I did enjoy parts of it. If you are out for gre More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2011

Ron rated it:

An interestingly satirical (interesting because a similarity to Candide by Voltaire came to mind while reading it, and while not as brazen and provocative as Voltaire, it does have a healthy dose of self-mocking/loathing of the status quo, in this case early 19th century English upper crust) though long-winded (at times leisurely, at other times tedious, owing to antiquated syntax and vocabulary) and with an interesting narrative voice, which pokes in and out of the story, much like the emcee in More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Alison rated it:

This is a masterpiece and I wish I had been able to write on it when I first read it. I also enjoyed the BBC mini-series which was truer to the novel than the Mira Nair adaptation with Reese Witherspoon in 2004 (although the MN version was obviously visually more stunning). Reese took the role of Becky Sharpe in a different direction and I think we were meant to be more sympathetic to her plight. I liked Becky better in the book where she was fabulously selfish & nasty.

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2011

Alex rated it:

Vanity Fair is sometimes called the best British novel ever written, but it's totally not. Middlemarch is way better. Honestly, VF's not even in the top ten. So why do people love it so much? Because of Becky Sharpe. Which is funny, because she's not what it was supposed to be about.

Becky Sharpe is to Thackeray as Satan is to Milton. The argument has been made in both cases that the author secretly intended us to love their most memorable characters, but that's not true - or at least More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 14, 2011

Pirata rated it:

This book is really good and there are a lot of funny bits that I am sure would be hilarious if one was well read in pop culture of 1847 London. But, there are footnotes to help one along. I love/hate that is really is "a book without a hero" as Thackeray declares. every single character has some sort of defect that Thackeray does not attempt to hide from us. In a way I feel like he is a graphic father, showing me the world - warning me of all the egotistic and selfish people it co More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 04, 2008

Vince rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 11, 2008

Alison rated it:

Seriously one of my most favorite books. Thackeray portrays his characters as people really are - flawed. That doesn't mean that they don't have their virtues, however.
The characters portray types of people that still exist in the world today. Amelia is dependent on another for her own happiness. George is vain and selfish, and is insensitive to the feelings of others. Miss Crawley is prejiduce, but won't admit it. Jos Sedley is selfish, and a slave to his appetites. Georgy is spoiled. M More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2008

Valine rated it:

This book has a love hate relationship with me. I cheered when Amelia finally brings her head above water. I wanted to shake some sense in her throughout the book. I wished that Rebecca had ended up in a debtors prison. The indomitable spirit of both these women was interesting to see unfold from their perspective situations. What a cutthroat world Vanity Fair is. Most of the men had little senses/brains, but one Major Dobbins who I loved from the beginning. I do have to confess that I gl More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2009

Eleni rated it:

excellent satire of early 19th century upper middle class and upper class British society.... good plot; well rounded (despite their being foils or essences/types) characters; attention to detail and complex structure - but very long.... perhaps it's being serialized rather than written in book form impacted length...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

Oooh, Becky Sharp, you scheming minx. I started this in junior high but got disgusted with the heroines (one too evil, the other too namby-pamby). Now I'm loving it...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2008

Gavin rated it:

It couldn't have been this exact edition I read, this having been published in 2003 and myself having read it around 1984 or 1985. My brother was the literature student, but he couldn't take this weighty tome. I borrowed it off him during the course of a family holiday and barely spoke to the family again until I'd finished it.

It is considered to be perhaps the definitive account of late Georgian life, although I reckon it depicts the Victorians more, after all it was written by an e More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 20, 2007

Magid rated it:

This novel was even better the second time round. The pages fly by with Thackeray's vivid depiction of a London which seems to have changed so little in 200 years - still populated by the same motley crew of characters from all walks of life, trying to get on in the city. Becky Sharp is one of the most fascinating, attractive, ingenious, well-drawn and three-dimensional characters in all of literature, and reading this novel ten years after the first time I read it just made me fall in love with More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2010

Karen added it

This lengthy novel at times tries the reader's patience, but the firey Becky Sharp commands attention to the end.[return][return]School chums Amanda Sedley and Becky Sharp come from two different backgrounds: the former from privelege, the latter from poverty thanks to a starving artist father. Amanda is meek while Becky is cunning, and the novel depicts how these two different personalities make their way through life. Amanda falls in love with Osbourne, a handsome scoundrel whose father ruined More...

1 comment like

Dec 31, 2009

Margaret rated it:

I had a lovely Everyman's edition of Vanity Fair for several years, just sitting on my bookshelf unread, looking reproachfully at me. Finally, I decided to take it down and read it, thus filling an enormous gap in my Victorian-era reading. I fear that I can now only be disappointed in Thackeray's other books (though I intend to read them anyway), because I can't imagine anything better than Vanity Fair.

The plot does sprawl a little, but the characters are so wonderfully realized that More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2012

manyhighways rated it:

I'm just going to come right out and admit it: I'm a sucker for classic 19th century novels. "Anna Karenina" is one of my favorites and I've read my share of Jane Austen. When I saw the previews for "Vanity Fair" with the incredibly wicked-looking Reese Witherspoon a few months ago I immediately reserved the book at the library. I haven't seen the movie yet but the book was quite entertaining.

The novel revolves around Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley. Amelia is n More...

0 comments like

Nov 04, 2011

Helen rated it:

This is a brilliant piece of satire. I had meant to read it for years and finally got around to it this year. This weighty tome enthralled me the first to the last page. What did I like about it? Well, it holds up a mirror to society, and reveals very uncomfortable truths. In many clearly unpleasant characters there are familiar and recognisable traits that most people can discern in themselves and would rather not acknowledge.

Becky Sharp herself is portrayed as a woman compelled by th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 21, 2011

Roberta rated it:

Vanitas Vanitatum
"Ah Vanitas Vanitatum! Chi di noi è felice in questo mondo? Chi di noi raggiunge quello che desiderava, o avendolo raggiunto, è soddisfatto? Venite, ragazzi, riponiamo baracca e burattini: la commedia è finita." [explicit]
Maestoso romanzo ottocentesco, originariamente pubblicato a puntate, riscosse un successo tale da spaventare l'allora incontrastato re dei romanzi a puntate, Charles Dickens. Un onnisciente e anonimo narratore ci racconta la Fiera delle Vani More...

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Oct 12, 2011

Lois rated it:

What I loved about this book: the characters are people I know--the backstabbing ambitious conniving woman, those eaten by pride, the vain, the lonely, the desperate, the ones who are are in love with someone they can't have, the one who is in love with an unrealistic memory and who just can't let go--sounds like the cast of a tv show, doesn't it? Heck, it sounds like my old neighborhood. ;)
I loved the twists and turns of the plot--it was a soap opera on paper. One minute the characters h More...

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Oct 09, 2011

Peter rated it:

"Thackery's brilliant satirical novel in Regency era England follows the unforgetable scheming Becky Sharpe and her sweet passive friend Amelia Sedley through 15 years of life, love, war, and retribution. This is one of the funniest novels I have read, although at over 700 pages, it takes considerable patience and Thackery, while always witty, does meander at some points to paint a scene.

I knew from the first few chapters that I would love it, and I applaud Thackery's ever expa More...

0 comments like

Sep 01, 2011

Catherine rated it:

When I saw that my book club picked Vanity Fair to read, I was excited! It had been on my to-read list for quite some time already. I downloaded a free copy onto my Kobo and started reading away. Overall, I did like the book. The book follow two characters mainly, Amelia, the kind-goodhearted girl, and Becky, the scheming, social-climbing one. . Although it appears that everyone else in my bookclub seemed to hate Becky, I found her antics quite amusing and quickly got bored whenever she wasn't a More...

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