This review will read a bit strangely as it was a group read and I commented on each "part" as I finished reading it.

Spoilers ahead!~!

I enjoyed this read tremendously and I found much to admire in our little Becky Sharp. She had a lot on the ball and was very quick to know what she needed do in order to attain her wants and needs. Those who pity her need think again.
I found Jos to be a big old baby puss and thought that he needed to "man up". But his character truly suited the narration of the story. I did think that his sister, Miss Amelia's character changed too much in the story line. I quite liked her in the beginning, but throughout the middle part...................
The class levels in Vanity Fair are very much "out there" but strangely I see a lot of the same small ostracizings going on today.
Surprising things happening midway through the book.
What a wonderful hero our Captain Dobbin is turning out to be. I rooted for him the entire way through and for things to turn out nicely for him.
I must say that I found the encouragement of the courting of Miss Swartz by Mr. Crawley, the younger, quite odd for this time period and at the same time found it quite brave of the "younger" to refrain from obedience and follow his heart.
Not only soldiers go to war during this era. Apparently people found battles to be of great entertainment as they followed them and could not get there quickly enough. Amazing more civilians did not die at the front than did.
Miss Amelia is quickly turning to milk toast. Funny, I thought she had more spunk than that and perchance by book's end it will show it's face again.
Well, well, well, our Miss Becky is beginning to show her true colors and her adeptness at using people very much to her advantage. Not that she has not all the way through the book done this, but she does it now with a different attitude and heart.
Jos is off somewhere, most likely in India again doing whatever he does there. Miss Amelia has begun to grow a backbone which I am so glad to see.
Thackeray writes this entire work with his tongue in his cheek and I quite enjoy the result of his efforts. This third part is a bit slow going up until the last chapter. Then things begin to pick up.
My, my, my. Such happenings and carryings on as we should ever see. Things coming together to the benefit of "some". Becky getting her comeuppance and then getting her life back to the order in which she enjoys. Miss Amelia waking up to see the real order of the world, getting rid of her rose colored glasses, coming to her senses and doing what she most likely has wanted to do all along. Poor Jos; such an unknowingly sad life and such a sad demise. Do we dare to think he was poisoned? And William; William finally growing some big kahunas at last and standing up for himself.
Thackeray has written a very enjoyable tete-a tete here and I find I quite liked it. I think it could have been compiled into perhaps 480 pages instead of 680. I loved all the little sketches throughout the book.
I am very happy to have been a part of this group read as I was not familiar with Thackeray in the least. I still don't know that I am but I am interested enough to try something else of his. I do know that without the group read, I would never have picked up this particular book, so thank you all for having chosen it as one of this years reads. ( )

A gem, really. I always thought that this classic was a weird story, but it isn't. It's a beautiful story, with characters that stay with you. Becky, the heroine, is unique in her wickedness and shrewdness. ( )

Quite witty, with barbed humor. ( )

Quite witty, with barbed humor. ( )

O, the satisfaction in finishing this book! Thackeray is a cynical genius - more pessimistic and critical than Dickens - and the characters in 'Vanity Fair' are captivating, but this is a heavy book padded with much social commentary and subjective griping from the author. The trick, I think, to persevering, is to read a copy with type of a legible size.

This 'novel without a hero' - although the dependable and earnest Dobbin is more than worthy of that honour - is about the proud, arrogant, pompous, grasping, sly, hypocritical and vain men and women of Vanity Fair, Thackeray's name for society, and those who aspire to be accepted amongst its ranks. The anti-heroine of the story is Becky Sharp, who claws her way up from charity case to governess to army wife, at the expense of friends and lovers, but without finding satisfaction or happiness. Her tenacity and ambition are admirable, but Becky is rarely likeable - her exploits are amusing, talented and charming, but she is not a sympathetic character by any means. For all that she hurts others - her devoted husband and neglected son - there is an appropriate sense of justice in Thackeray's novel that keeps knocking Becky down at the height of her success. The odious Lord Steyne is more than a match for her scheming, and watching her come undone is refreshing. Of course, she is rarely down for long, and never defeated. The rest of the cast are also vividly human in their faults and the choices they make - pathetic Emmy and her poor father, conceited George, ridiculous Jos, proud Mr Osbourne. These characters are the strength of the novel, carrying the reader through the social and historical lectures which fill the rest of the tome.

That said, Thackeray's sharp observations on the beahviour of men and women are still relevant today, and very droll in the telling. Backbiting amongst female friends, the plain companion of the vivacious beauty, English travellers herding together abroad and recreating a 'little England' in foreign countries - not much has changed!

I heartily recommend this sizeable novel, but if the footnotes and meandering narrative are intimidating, then the BBC miniseries with Natasha Little as Becky, Philip Glenister as the wonderful Dobbin and Nathaniel Parker as Rawdon, is an excellent introduction, faithful in spirit to the text. ( )