'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray

What a name!!!

And a pretty great book. With a storyline that has be milked by hundreds of plays, movies and television shows over the past 200 hundred years, it comes as no suprise that this novel seems almost predictable. However, without a lifetime of knockoffs, a reader would be completely enthralled by this story.

Even WITH a lifetime of knockoffs I found myself devouring page after page of this book. With a few weeks of slow, meandering I still finished the majority of this 800 page book in about one week. It gets good and stays good.

With two main protagonists, Amelia Selby and Rebecca Sharp, the plot shows the ups and downs of two women who lead nearly opposite lives. One which starts at the bottom of society and peaks as high as any well bred woman could ever hope to, and another who seems destined for greatness but has a downfall that is unmatched in literature. Karma seemingly rights the wrongs as the novel concludes but it is a marvel at how Thackeray crafted such complex, likeable and opposite women.

The men remain, as it should be, mostly secondary or tertiary characters throughout and we see the best and the worst of behaviours from them as well. One can see a very christian bias in this writing.

Thackeray said that he learned how to write through the penning of this book and boy can he. You would be hard pressed to find an unsettling word or an unnecessary scene between these covers.

Yet again, a classic that belongs in that category.