karensalmansohn

This one took me a long time to read. It's a good book--I'd say about 60% of it is a great book--but it wanders and lags a bit too much for me. The characters are either interesting but inconsistent (like Becky Sharp) or consistent but uninteresting (like Dobbin). None of the characters are ultimately very likable, but that isn't a weakness, in my opinion. More of an issue is that the book is really two novels that intertwine a little bit at some key moments. One novel is the satiric look at the rise and fall of Becky Sharp and the other is the "romance" of Amelia and Dobbin. The former is by far the stronger part, and the scenes of Becky's triumphs in London are written without any allusion to Amelia and Dobbin. The romance isn't of much interest, and given the other narrative, the very idea of romance is treated with ambivalence. The problem, though, is that one plot or the other will take over for a hundred or more pages, and by the time Thackeray returns to the other plot, I had forgotten many of the important but undifferentiated characters. I'm glad I read it, but I would not say it is a "must read" novel from the 19th century.

2023-03-06 13:24