Hope readers don’t mind my dropping in this HNS review of a book critiqued by Fiction Feedback as my blog post. We
were very impressed by David James’s literary yet very readable sequel to Vanity Fair – we have a paperback copy on the
Fiction Feedback ‘published’ shelf – and it’s great to see we aren’t the only
ones who like it. It’s a bit racy – but compared to a certain famous book–now–film,
it’s pure vanilla sauce.
Historical Novel Society reviews are well regarded, so worth a look?
The
Confessions of Becky Sharp by David James: Review by Anne
McNulty in HNS Reviews http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-confessions-of-becky-sharpe/
Fans of William Makepeace
Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair and its unforgettable anti-heroine, Becky
Sharp, will delight in David James’s smart, intensely readable, funny, and
surprisingly moving take on that classic novel’s plot. In the pages of James’s
novel, Becky Sharp (the semi-tragic Lady Crawley) jumps to center stage and
tells her own story, culminating in her marriage to Rawdon Crawley, her
disastrous affair with Lord Steyne, and her own take on the decidedly
scandalous characterization Thackeray gives her throughout his book.
James fills the whole narrative with great pathos, glints of humor, and
some very perceptive echoes and warpings of his famous template, all the while
imbuing Becky herself with all the caustic intelligence Thackeray gave her, but
a good deal more humanity. Without doing excessive violence to the continuity
of Vanity Fair, he manages to give his unforgettable heroine the one
thing Thackeray pointedly denied her: a kind of triumph. Readers who are
familiar with Vanity Fair will love this book, but even readers who are
not will find it an intelligent and fast-paced story. As a literary pastiche,
it could hardly be bettered.
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