So after a break I'm back to re-reading my ten favourite books of all time. I've actually forgotten the original ghost list I'd compiled in my head but deliberately didn't write down. I think I'd been surprised by how few female writers I was intending to include. I'll probably be addressing that balance as a couple of old favourites have popped into my head this week. I'm surprised I'd left them out before.
But this week, after a disastrous dalliance with modern trendy reading (I read 'The Slap' by Christos Tsiolkas and hated it) I've returned to WM Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair'. This is definitely one of my all time favourites. It's a weird choice though and it's hard to really identify why I love it so much. It's interesting to compare it to 'The Slap', though I won't labour the point as 'The Slap' doesn't deserve the comparison. Both are books concerned with the unpleasant in human nature. Thackeray as the author butts into the narrative a lot and his breezy, non-judgemental asides about the social crimes of his characters are a masterpiece of irony. Tsiolkas in contrast just races through rough character sketches of some pretty rough characters. 'The Slap' feels like an adolescent outburst showing up the kind of people Tsiolkas obviously hates (and who wouldn't) without showing any roundedness of human nature and human society. Although Thackeray is mean and judgemental (and I like mean and judgemental) there is a definite affection for his flawed characters too.
The scale of 'Vanity Fair' is massive and as the purpose of this reading project was really to distil what I love to read so I know what I love to write, this is daunting. It was written, like a lot of the Victorian greats, in instalments for a magazine. That has given the plot a certain rambling quality which I know I enjoy. I like audacity with narrative and the thinking on a large scale without too much concern for form or structure. But that's a tricky feat to achieve.
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