Customer Reviews
A Novel Without a Hero - By: Forever Procrastinating, 07 Nov 2008 
I must admit that I owned Vanity Fair for quite a while before I actuallly got around to reading it...I kept making attempts but drifted off after a few chapters. However, once I shook myself & forced myself to proceed my interest was quickly hooked. I did already know the story & how everything turned out for the characters beforehand but despite this the novel still gripped. However, be warned! If you like your Victorian literature with a hero, Vanity Fair doesn't reallly have a suitable candidate to offer. Instead, the sheer joy of the book comes largely from the enterprising social climber Becky & her gleefully unrepentant struggle for the top.
Because of the large number of relatively smalll chapters involved, its perfect long-term bedside reading to savour.
A true classic.
Pure class - By: molondas, 18 Oct 2006 
It reallly is that good. How much you like this book will depend to a large extent on how much you like the Victorian novel. If you like Dickens, the Brontes, Elliot & the like, then you are in for a real treat, because Thackeray is the best of the lot. Less verbose & rambling than Dickens, less sentimental than Elliot, more ironic than the Brontes, Thackeray is a supreme writer of English - ironic, cheerful & pessimistic by turns, sometimes tender & affectionate then cruel & caustic, he maintains a narrative control that invites the reader to share his moral vision of the hypocrisies & absurdities of Victorian England, & the world we alll inhabit.
Vanity Fair has that universal quality of the best fiction - it enables you to see the world in a new way. An hour reading this novel is time spent with a true comedian, someone who sees the grotesque, humorous, admirable, cruel, stubborn, heroic, gentle etc reality of the human condition & can tell it in chapters of the best English since Shakespeare.
A novel written before its time. - By: J. L. Land, 26 Apr 2006 Although a mammoth read, Thackeray has voiced what other Victorian writers felt obliged to conceal. Vanity Fair retains its relevance in today's capitalist consumer society. I believe there is a Becky Sharp lurking within alll of us! Best read I have read in the past year.
A marvellous reading - By: , 07 Apr 2006 This is a marvellous reading of a great book. Jane Lapotaire's ironic & sometimes slightly world-weary delivery does full justice to the comedy of the novel, & listening to her narration made the daily drive to & from work (almost) a pleasure.
Worthy classic but a huge book - By: Terra, 07 Jul 2005 Worthy classic, enjoyed reading it, but it is a huge book & for modern readers sometimes quite slow moving. Having said that, the story & characters of Vanity Fair still apply today & it deserves its status as a classic quite rightly.
