Have given up on this about 60 pages in. While in outline the life of Moll Flanders sounds racy and exciting, I cannot get into the writing style and have found it tedious. No rating.

Moll Flanders is a convict's daughter whose mother is forced to leave the baby Moll in England when she is transported to Virginia. Despite this unsatisfactory beginning, Moll makes a life for herself and comes to a happy old age after a series of ups and downs that would have finished off a less determined heroine. She keeps reasonably cheerful through it all and despite her protestations of repentance and penitence we suspect she rather enjoys looking back on her adventures. ( )

Moll Flanders describes how she fell into whoring (her words) and thievery. Basically it's a long rambling tale of her life as she moves from one husband to the next, sometimes marrying one husband while still "technically" married to the last, and leaving a litany of children in her wake (whom she seems to have little interest in at all, despite assurances otherwise).

The point of the story is that this is supposed to be a tale of the misfortunate, as tales about thieves, murders, and other miscreants were very popular at the time period.

It had enough to it that I was able to keep trudging through it, as she fell into one misfortune after another (kind of like watching a train wreck). But I have to admit that I was severely disappointed in the book, because I so loved the movie. True, the movie had been Hollywood-zed big time, but in my opinion this is one of the very rare cases where this was a good thing. Moll was more naive in the movie, not so much trying to con her way through live but falling into the necessity so as to survive, which is part of what appealed to me. The book's Moll lacked that innocence, and was openly deceptive and conned many men (from fear of poverty, true), and there was very little to redeem her.

Tar and feather me, if you like, but in my opinion the movie was more enjoyable than the book. ( )

Good, entertaining, funny. ( )

Rollicking good fun. After you read it, look up the famous plot hole re: her brother.