Vanity Fair

Vanity fair is one of those epic sprawling 19th century English novels. Written by William Makepeace Thackeray it's a satire on society but really it boils down to the story of two very different females, Amelia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp. Amelia is the typical girl you find in novels from this period, nice, pretty, amiable not that her story isn't interesting, it twists along nicely with love and loss and lots inbetween, alas her character is fairly insipid, and she's really just a bland, inoffensive nice girl but I think that is the authors intention. Miss Becky Sharp however is a whole different kettle of fish, born poor without any status in life and without family she manipulates and lies and sacrifices everything to climb to the heights of society and you should hate her for it. She is completely ruthless and deceitful and if ever I loved a fictional character I love her and I love Thackeray for writing a female with wit and independence rather than the usual love obsessed creature you normally get. It's a very long book, a huge amount happens but it's easy enough to keep track of everything, the two girls stories weave together well and the ending was perfect. I enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would, its full of irony and although you'll not laugh out loud you might well catch yourself grinning innanely at the pages as you read. It is a bit daunting to start with but the old fashioned English doesn't take long to get used to and once you get into the story I promise you'll be hooked. Little warning though, don't get the penguin popular classics version the typeset is painfully small. Read it, if only to meet Becky Sharp, the story is subtitled a novel without a hero but honestly she's mine. I can only imagine i'll be thinking to myself 'what would Becky do?' in times of strife for the foreseeable future.