Our resident book reviewer – Angela Galvin, has just given us a review of an old, but much loved book, Vanity Fair by the splendidly named author, William Makepeace Thackeray.
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Spurred on by the recent miniseries of this book I decided to read it again after many, many years. I remember thinking the first time I read it ( I might have been 17?) that I didn’t think very much of it.
First up I read this over Christmas where I read lots of simple “Feel
Good” novels with bright covers and simple stories, or engaging spy thrillers, and the odd biography – none of which have overly effusive prose.
William Makepeace Thackeray – wow – getting used to your writing style and the language took literally chapters for me. Fortunately I had seen the first installment of the television miniseries so I got the gist of it pretty quickly.
Funny thing I actually didn’t recall any of the story from my first reading – maybe at 17 I just couldn’t be bothered deciphering it.
Once you get passed the weird spelling – the story is quite a lark. The main character Miss Sharp is both likeable and revolting.
You can’t help thinking that WMT was the Monty Python of his day – poking fun at all the institutions and class structure – while writing a book to appeal to those very people.
If you haven’t read it it’s worth a couple of hours.
