I once read that "Vanity Fair" had been classified as one of the "most boring classics" by a group of English professors, who hopefully have all been fired, as they can NOT have had any appreciation for the incisive use of the English language, the witty skewering of Victorian society, the rollicking plot, or the unforgettable characters. Becky Sharpe isn't likeable -- but in the end, you have to admire her insatiability and efficiency. Amelia and Dobbin live out the stereotypical storybook romance -- but Thackeray dares to show how the story usually ends. This is one of the few books that had me consistently laughing aloud; virtually every page has a stinging comment or revealing moment that catches the attention. Although it's a "classic" (think leather-bound dusty volumes with edifying quotes from the latin), this is as vital, insightful, and "modern" a novel as you could hope to read. (And for the record, I think comparing Thackeray and Austen is like comparing Stephen King and Alice Walker -- they're writing at the same time, but the similarities end there!)

William Makepeace Thackeray subtitled "Vanity Fair", his masterful comic novel, "A Novel Without a Hero". But while this big, baggy eight-hundred page monstrosity of comic characters and situations may lack a hero, it has two of the most memorable characters in English literature: Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The contrapuntal, shifting fortunes of these two women drive the narrative of this big book, painting, along the way, a brilliant satirical portrait of English and European society at the time of the Napoleonic wars. We first meet Amelia and Becky in the opening pages of the novel, leaving Miss Pinkerton's School for the wider world of fortune, love and marriage. Amelia Sedley, the naive, sheltered daughter of a rich London merchant whose fortunes will dramatically change over the course of her life, "was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person." In contrast, Becky Sharp, the impoverished orphan of an artist and a French opera singer of dubious repute, was a calculating, amoral social climber. "Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable . . . but she had the dismal precocity of poverty." From the opening pages, Thackeray captures the reader's interest in these two characters and carries the reader through marriages, births, deaths, poverty, misfortune, social climbing . . . even the Battle of Waterloo! While Amelia and Becky wind like a long, contrasting thread from the beginning to the end of this story, there are also plots and subplots, intrigues and authorial asides, and one character after another, all of this literary invention keeping the reader incessantly preoccupied and enthralled. Reading "Vanity Fair" is the furthest thing from "killing time" (as the dusty, misguided literary critic F. R. Leavis once said); it is, rather, the epitome of the nineteenth century English comic novel, a masterpiece in every sense of the word.

William Makepeace Thackeray subtitled "Vanity Fair", his masterful comic novel, "A Novel Without a Hero". But while this big, baggy eight-hundred page monstrosity of comic characters and situations may lack a hero, it has two of the most memorable characters in English literature: Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The contrapuntal, shifting fortunes of these two women drive the narrative of this big book, painting, along the way, a brilliant satirical portrait of English and European society at the time of the Napoleonic wars.

We first meet Amelia and Becky in the opening pages of the novel, leaving Miss Pinkerton's School for the wider world of fortune, love and marriage. Amelia Sedley, the naive, sheltered daughter of a rich London merchant whose fortunes will dramatically change over the course of her life, "was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person." In contrast, Becky Sharp, the impoverished orphan of an artist and a French opera singer of dubious repute, was a calculating, amoral social climber. "Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable . . . but she had the dismal precocity of poverty."

From the opening pages, Thackeray captures the reader's interest in these two characters and carries the reader through marriages, births, deaths, poverty, misfortune, social climbing . . . even the Battle of Waterloo! While Amelia and Becky wind like a long, contrasting thread from the beginning to the end of this story, there are also plots and subplots, intrigues and authorial asides, and one character after another, all of this literary invention keeping the reader incessantly preoccupied and enthralled. Reading "Vanity Fair" is the furthest thing from "killing time" (as the dusty, misguided literary critic F. R. Leavis once said); it is, rather, the epitome of the nineteenth century English comic novel, a masterpiece in every sense of the word.