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Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

Jan29

Finding Nouf is one of ten winners of the 2009 Alex Awards for “adult books that will appeal to teen readers.” I read it a week or two ago before the award list came out, and I must say that I was impressed, although I didn’t think of it as an adult book or a young adult book. It’s shelved with the adult mysteries in my library.

Finding Nouf, although written in a genre, detective stories, that’s know for its plot-driven novels, is all about setting first, and then characterization. The plot is serviceable, but not what kept me reading. In fact, I had to look back at the book just now to remind myself whodunnit. The story is set in Saudi Arabia, where a Palestinian orphan, Nayir, and a young professional, Katya Hijazi, team up to solve the disappearance and murder of a rich Saudi sixteen year old, Nouf. Nouf happens to be the sister of Miss Hijazi’s fiance and Nayir’s friend, Othman Shrawi. And even though Nayir is uncomfortable with the mere presence of Katya Hijazi, a single woman, in the same room with men, and sometimes unveiled, he realizes that the tow of them need to work together if they are going to navigate the rules, written and unwritten, of Saudi culture and society and find out what really happened to Nouf.

The relationships of men and women in such a legalistic, religion-drenched society are complicated and awkward. Modernity is an influence, as is tradition, and both fight against the exigencies of just getting things done, like a murder investigation or even a simple meal. It was fascinating to read about how naive and ignorant Nayir was in the area of relating to women, and yet I wondered if men in our “open and free” American society understand women any better than Nayir does.

Zoe Ferraris, by the way, lived in Saudi Arabia with her Saudi-Palestinian husband just after the first Gulf War, although she is now divorced and lives in San Francisco.

LA TImes article about the book: “Now there is “Finding Nouf,” the fictional outcome of San Franciscan Zoë Ferraris’ habitation in Saudi Arabia for several years after the first Gulf War. Even if that information had been left off the jacket flap, it would be readily apparent; only a writer with experience both as a part of and apart from Saudi culture could have crafted such a novel.”

At Talifoon by Zoe Ferraris (a short, but revealing, article about Ms. Ferraris’s life in Saudi Arabia): “Just after the first Gulf War, I moved to Jeddah with my husband. I didn’t realize at the time that I hadn’t married Essam, I had married his mother and the women of his family. The minute I arrived, they became my world.”

An interview with Zoe Ferraris: “The biggest revelation I had in Saudi Arabia was learning that men were just as frustrated by gender segregation as women were. My ex-husband’s best friend tried for years to find a wife. It surprised me to realize something that should have been obvious: if you’re not allowed to speak to the opposite sex, how do you meet a mate?”

I found this book on the recommendation of Sam Sattler at Book Chase. Thanks, Sam.

12 Best Adult Fiction Books I Read in 2008

Dec31

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Semicolon review here.

The Winds of War by Herman Wouk.

War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk. I didn’t review these two novels of World War II because I wasn’t sure what to say about them. My pastor recommended them because they’re a couple of his favorites, and I enjoyed them voraciously. Epic. Classic.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Recommended by Elliot at Claw of the Conciliator.

Old School by Tobias Wolff. I never reviewed this one either, but I found it curiously satisfying. It’s a prep school story about a boy who makes a bad decision, similar to A Separate Peace or the movie The Winslow Boy.

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. Semicolon review here.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Semicolon review here.

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Semicolon review here.

Random Harvest by James Hilton. Semicolon review here.

Scarlett by Stephen Lawhead. No review for this second book in Lawhead’s King Raven (Robin Hood) series, but I am eagerly looking forward to the third in the series, Tuck, which is supposed to ship in mid-January.

Some WIldflower in My Heart by jamie Langston Turner. Semicolon review here.

Best discovery of the year: Wendell Berry’s novels.

Book of the year: Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry.

The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss

Dec29

Financiers and businessmen blackmail the U.S. government into covering their poor business decisions and bad debts as government officials, especially the Secretary of the Treasury, fear the collapse of the entire U.S. economy if banks and financial speculators are allowed to reap the consequences of their bad gambles. The government spends money that it doesn’t have, and taxes the poor who can least afford to pay, for the benefit of greedy rich men who are said to be the only bulwark that is propping up the U.S. economy.

It sounds like the lead into an analysis of the U.S. economy at the end of the year 2008, doesn’t it? And yet it’s a summary of the plot of the novel The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss, published in 2008, but set in the late 1700’s. The Treasury Secretary is not Henry Paulson, but rather Alexander Hamilton, the first to hold that office. The greedy speculators are not Wall Street gamblers and bankers and auto industry tycoons, but rather investors in the new Bank of the United States and land speculators who sell worthless Western lands in exchange for government securities and promissory notes that the fledgling government gave to soldiers of the Continental Army in place of the money that it didn’t have at the end of the Revolutionary War.

Based on true historical events and peopled actual historical characters, Liss’s novel was both an education in the history in the time period and an occasion for me to think about the parallels that exist between that time of economic turmoil and our own financial difficulties today. Just as there is now, there was a contingent who said that the government should let the financial markets do as they would, let the banks and financiers fail or bankrupt themselves, and deal with the consequences afterwards. “Better anarchy than an unjust nation that masquerades as a beacon of righteousness. That would be worse than outright tyranny.” Others said the result would be “the collapse of our economic system.” “Banks will fail, so merchants will fail, and then farms. And then starvation. That is the best we can hope for.”

It’s the same argument we’re having over two hundred years later, and the corrupt forces of financial chicanery have us in their grip just as surely as the wheelers and dealers of the American republic had the nation in a financial panic in 1792. Only the names and some of the details have changed. I’m amazed to think that this book was written before our current financial and political difficulties came to a head, and the parallels to today’s news in the book are unplanned and all the more striking for being so.

As for the novel itself, Mr. Liss is a decent writer, has a good handle on the setting and circumstances of the early years of our American experiment. The book is quite violent, presumably because as the author says, “Conditions on the western frontier were every bit as brutal as I describe, and probably more so.” The main characters in the novel are Ethan Saunders, a drunken and disgraced ex-Continental Army spy, and Joan Maycott, a settler with her husband in the wilds of western Pennsylvania. These two tell the story, each from his or her own point of view, in alternating chapters, and the first intriguing problem that the reader is set is to figure out how their stories are intertwined, if they are. As the two protagonists’ paths do cross in Philadelphia, the next puzzle is to find out which has the upper hand and which will win the battle of wits that becomes a fight for the survival of the newborn United States of America.

Anyone who is interested in the history of the Republic or in financial crises or in the arguments for and against government intervention in the financial world will find this book enlightening and absorbing. If you don’t mind some violence and a little bit of bad language, not too much, and if the subject interests you, take a look. I like my economic and political lessons in a fictional package, so this book was just the ticket, even though I’m still not sure what to think of the government’s robbing the poor to bail out the rich supposedly in order to save both from irreparable financial ruin. It’s a conundrum that I can’t quite resolve.

News and Links

Dec9

Joseph Rendini: Week Without Abortion: Too Little, Too Late “Russia needs Russians to survive. The country’s abortion rate, a cultural by-product of 75 years of imposed atheistic socialism, remains among the highest in the world. Nearly 70 percent of Russian pregnancies end in abortion. In 2004, there were 100,000 more abortions than live births. No nation can withstand such wholesale, self-induced slaughter of its own children.” I know that the abortion rate has been going down in the past ten years or so, but are we headed, under Obama, for the kind of slaughter that Mr. Redini talks about here? I pray not.

On a lighter note, Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli reviews 44 Scotland Street and Expresso Tales, both serialized novels by Alexander McCall Smith.

“McCall Smith writes well. There is a suppleness and almost a poetry in his simple, direct, clear writing. There is an obvious affection for even the most odious of characters and he can’t seem to quite give them their comeuppance. And in the course of the books, that turns out to be quite all right.

If you need something to take your mind off of present difficulties, or if you’re looking for something to fill in the gaps left between the novels of Jan Karon, you may enjoy the works of McCall Smith, and most particularly these two books about the residents of Scotland Street.

I’ve read 44 Scotland Street and several novels by Mr. Smith, and I would agree with Mr. Riddle’s assessment. Alexander McCall Smith writes vignettes/short stories that I can enjoy, loosely strung together but each a small “pearl.”

War and Reconstruction: Establishing Democracy in Italy and Iraq

Sep23


I read two books this month about U.S. attempts to establish democracy in a conquered/freed nation. A Bell for Adano by John Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. It’s about Major Victor Joppolo, an Italian American officer in the U.S. army who was “more or less the American mayor after our invasion” of Adano a small village in Sicily. Sunrise Over Fallujah is a contemporary young adult novel by Walter Dean Myers about young American soldier, Robin Perry, and his tour of duty in Iraq as a member of a Civil Affairs unit, a sort of put-out-the-fires public relations unit that’s called on to smooth relations with the Iraqi people in special, sometimes ticklish, situations.

The two books, although dealing with similar situations, had completely different atmospheres and a completely different take on war and its aftermath. Operation Iraqi Freedom versus Allied Miitary Government Occupied Territory (AMGOT). In one war, the Americans and their allies are invading an enemy’s country to conquer the fascists and establish democracy, no doubts that democracy is best or that it will work, just confidence and determination to finish a tough job no matter what the obstacles. Maor Joppolo must deal with army bureaucracy and with Italian obfuscation, but he is, as the author tells us from the beginning, “good.” In fact, again according to Mr. Hersey, “there were probably not any really bad men in Amgot, but there were some stupid ones.” Hersey’s American soldiers are more or less well-meaning, sometimes drunk, sometimes selfish, but bumbling toward a trustful relationship with the Italian people who are under their temporary rule in spite of mistakes and because of their essential good nature.

In the other war, the soldiers are confused about their mission, circumscribed and limited in their ability to do anything meaningful, worried about seeming too “gung-ho” and worried about not doing enough, afraid for their lives as they see roadside bombs kill comrades, and finally deceived and betrayed by their own commanders into participating in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. The Iraqis themselves are very minor characters in Sunrise Over Fallujah; one Iraqi who works for the soldiers at their base is asked what he thinks about the Americans being in his country, but his answer is ambiguous and noncommittal as befits some one who is being paid to work for the U.S. military.

All the Italians, even the “enemy” fascists, in Hersey’s book are somewhat comical and clownish; there’s not much to fear from the former mayor of Adano who can’t even decide if he wants to escape and run to the Germans or stay and be “reconstructed.” And Hersey’s good guys and bad guys are easily distinguished. Myers’ Iraqis are much more shadowy figures, and Robin can’t decide who the enemy is half the time. The issue of trust and whom you can trust in such a foreign land is a continuing problem in in Sunrise. Finally, the soldiers in Iraq in Sunrise Over Fallujah find that they can only trust their buddies, and sometimes not even everyone in their own unit.

In both books a child dies, by accident, at the hands of the Americans. But in A Bell for Adano the accidental death of an Italian child run over by an American military truck results in a new policy for ensuring the safety of the children who run beside the trucks to beg for candy from the AMerican GI’s. Major Joppolo says that the accident is a result of the Americans’ generosity:

“Sometimes generosity is a fault with Americans, sometimes it does harm. It has brought high prices here, and it has brought you misery. But it is the best thing we Americans can bring with us to Europe. So please do not hate the Americans.”

Throughout the book, Major Joppolo is sure that, in spite of mistakes and tragedies, the Americans are in Italy to do good, to defeat the bad guys and lead the Italian civilians to a better life. And the Italians, for the most part, go along with the major’s view of things. They see the AMericans as liberators, and even when mistakes are made, the Italian protest is muted and more mournful than angry.

In Sunrise Over Fallujah, children die as a result of “collateral damage” from an American bombing run, and the protagonist, Robin Perry, also holds a dying Iraqi child in his arms. (I don’t remember the exact circumstances, and I’ve already returned the book to the library.) No one talks about the good intentions of the Americans or tries to explain the tragedies as misplaced American generosity. No one is ever sure that what the Americans are doing or trying to do in Iraq is good or right or better for the Iraqi people.

I tend to believe that war and reconstruction are always much more Fallujah-like (confusing and dangerous) than Adano-like (good-natured and bumbling), but maybe the difference is one of attitude and a crisis of confidence. Was the American military governance of Sicily really more of a farce than a tragedy because the Americans of that generation believed in what they were doing and so made others believe in it, too, even their erstwhile enemies? Can we do the same thing, win hearts and minds, establish democracy, in Fallujah and in Iraq, or are the people of Iraq too foreign, too Muslim, too different, and too dangerous? I’m not there, and I don’t know, but reading these two books in conjunction with one another has made me think. We do live in different world now than my grandparents lived in after WW II, but we are engaged in much the same task as Major Joppolo was in A Bell for Adano. Surely, if we could win Italian hearts and minds in 1945, we can win Iraqi hearts and mind in 2008. It’s just going to take a bunch of Major Joppolos and a great deal of wisdom and restraint on the part of some very young soldiers like Robin Perry.

Just.

Random Harvest by James Hilton

Sep15

I read Lost Horizon a long time ago, and I’ve seen the movies. I enjoyed the book and the movies. Random Harvst by the same author is a different book, but it has the same feel to it. The characters have, and give the reader, that same longing to return to a simpler time and place; it’s a romance in the best sense of the word, just like Lost Horizon.

In fact, either finishing Random Harvest or a hormonal flare or both made me feel incredibly sad and nostalgic tonight. Then, I had a discussion with Eldest Daughter about politics and nuclear weapons and the war in Iraq and American imperialism and the global economy (yeah, all that), and that made me even sadder. So this review may or may not be truly indicative of the quality of the book. When you factor in romanticism and politics and hormones, anything can happen.

Random Harvest is an amnesia story about a man who loses three years of his life when he is wounded during World War I. The man, Charles Ranier, finds himself in Liverpool on a park bench and remembers everything that happened to him before he was wounded but nothing of the past three years, the ending of the war, and his return home. I’m not sure, but I think Hilton was trying to say something about the collective amnesia of the British people on the brink of another war because they had purposely forgotten the lessons of World War I. The book indicates that the pursuit of riches and economic power and the crusading spirit of the socialists are both inadequate substitutes for personal relationships and commitment to or faith in something beyond the here and now. Actually, I’m not sure Mr. Hilton was embedding such a didactic message in his book, but that summation approximates the message I got out of the book.

Mostly, Random Harvest is just a good story. There’s an impossibly romantic surprise ending, and I didn’t catch on to it until the last few pages of the book. So the finale was quite satisfying. And the story itself moved along somewhat slowly, but with enough going on to keep my interest, and just enough philosophical speculation to make me think a bit without straining my brain too much.

And the writing is very British and very 1940’s. Here’s a sample quotation that made me think of blogging:

“Those were the happy days when Smith began to write. As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to become a writer. He turned out countless articles and sketches that gave him pleasure only because they contained a germ of what was in his mind; but he was never fully satisfied with them himself and consequently was never more than slightly disappointed when editors promptly returned them. He did not grasp that, because he was a person of no importance, nobody wanted to read his opinions at all.”

Smith would have been a perfect blogger.

Random Harvest was a fun, sort of melancholy-producing, book, and if you like amnesia books set in the 1920’s, written in the 1940’s, you should try it out. Other time-bending, amnesia books with a similar feel to them:

A Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan. Semicolon review here.

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. Not exactly an amnesia story, but it reminds me of Hilton’s style somehow. Semicolon review here.

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. More modern and young adult-ish. Semicolon review here.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. Also YA and more of a twenty-first century feel. Semicolon review here.

Anne Perry’s William Monk detective series features Mr. Monk as a late nineteenth century private detective suffering from amnesia. His assistant/love interest/foil is a nurse named Hester.

Any more amnesiac selections that you can remember? Mr. Hilton’s birthday was on the 9th of September, by the way. I forgot.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Sunday Salon: James Hilton, Wodehouse again, and Hurricane Blues

Sep14

We’re still in Fort Worth, refugees from Hurricane Ike. Computer Guru Son stayed in Clear Lake where we live, and he’s in one of the few places in all of Houston that still has electrical power. It’s strange since Clear Lake was right in the path of Ike, but the power lines are buried underground. So I suppose that’s why we have electricity when no one else does.

Son took some pictures yesterday afternoon, but then he discovered that while he has electricity, he no longer has an internet connection. So I can’t show you what it looks like down where I live. He says that all the traffic lights are out (no power and lots of wind damage), everything’s closed except for HEB, and people are driving like crazy fools with no traffic signals. Some places such as Nassau Bay, Kemah, and Seabrook are still flooded, and police are allowing no one into those cities. Engineer Husband says NASA officials are “assessing the damage” and hope to reopen Johnson Space Center by the end of the week.

And what hath all this Ike news to do with reading, you ask? Well, I’ve had time to read while waiting to return home. We hope to leave tomorrow morning to go back. In the meantime, I’ve read Random Harvest by James Hilton, the same author who wrote Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hilton actually lived in Hollywood during the 1930’s and after, and all three of the above named books were made into movies. I’ve only seen the two versions of Lost Horizon. Mr. Hilton also won an Academy Award for his work on the screenplay of Mrs. Miniver, a movie I did see last year and enjoyed in spite of, maybe because of, its unabashed patriotism.

I also started on a new-to-me Wodehouse romp, Bertie Wooster Sees It Through. I’m fairly sure I’ve never read this particular Bertie-and-Jeeves adventure; at least the first few chapters don’t seem too familiar. So far Bertie’s been almost trapped into an engagement with a distant cousin, Florence, refused to shave off his moustache in spite of Jeeves’s disapproval, and spent a night in the pokey as the result of tripping a police officer. I’d says he’s off to a good start.

I may or may not have an internet connection for the forseeable future. I would imagine that restoring power to Houston is more urgent than restoring my connection to the worldwide web. If I’m not here in writing, I’m here in spirit. Keep on reading.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Advanced Reading Survey: Cranford by Mrs. Gaskell

Sep8

I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid that the thirty year old spiral notebook in which I wrote these entries may fall apart ere long. I may offer my more mature perspective on the books, too, if I remember enough about them to do so.

Author:
Mrs Gaskell was the daughter of a Unitarian minister and later married another Unitarian minister. The death of her son caused her to start writing as a means of alleviating her grief. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was an immediate success, bringing her the friendship of Charles Dickens in whose magazine Household Words she published the novel Cranford, first as a serial.

Characters:
Miss Mary Smith, narrator of the events at Cranford.
Miss Deborah Jenkyns, a spinster and resident of Cranford.
Miss Maty Jenkyns, Deborah’s sister.

Other inhabitants of the village of Cranford and characters in the novel include:
Miss Pole
Mrs. Jamieson
Lady Glenmire
Mrs. Forrester
Mrs. Fitz-Adam
Captain Brown
Miss Jessie Brown

Quotations:
Miss Smith: “I have often noticed that almost everyone has his own individual small economies—careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction —any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance.”

Miss Pole: “My father was a man, and I know the sex pretty well.”

Miss Matty: “My father once made us,” she began, “keep a diary in two columns: on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming days, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people a rather sad way of telling their lives. . . . I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected.”

Miss Matty: “Marry!” said Miss Matty once again.”Well, I never thought of it. Two people that we know going to be married. It’s coming so very near.”

Miss Smith: “We felt it would be better to consider the engagement in the same light as the Queen of Spain’s legs—facts which certainly existed, but the less said about the better.”

Martha, Miss Matty’s servant: “Reason always means what someone else has got to say.”

My thoughts thirty years later:

This story of the lives and incidental affairs of a group of elderly spinsters in a village in VIctorian England would seem at first glance to be unrelated to my hectic and technologically dominated life with eight children, a husband, and a brother-in-law in Houston, Texas. But I remember it as being full of gentle insights into human foibles, a bit melancholy at times, and warmly humorous at other places in the narrative. I’d enjoy reading it again and would recommend it to lovers of Jane Austen or Jan Karon’s Mitford series or Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels.

I’d really like to see the PBS mini-series based on Mrs. Gaskell’s book, but I have so many things I’d like to watch and so many books to read. I’d also like to read Mrs. Gaskell’s North and South, which is about the north and south of England, not about the American Civil War.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Advanced Reading Survey: Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray

Sep1

I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid that the thirty year old spiral notebook in which I wrote these entries may fall apart ere long. I may offer my more mature perspective on the books, too, if I remember enough about them to do so.

I wrote about Vanity Fair a few weeks ago in this series; The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. is a different sort of book from Thackeray’s more popular Vanity Fair. Because of personal problems caused by the unstable mental condition of Thackeray’s wife, Henry Esmond was written during a period of deep depression for the author which accounts for the lack of comedy and the somber tone of the novel.

Characters:
Henry Esmond: an orphan who should rightfully have been the fourth Viscount Castlewood.
Francis Esmond: fourth Viscount Castlewood.
Rachel Esmond: Francis’s wife and later Henry’s
Frank Esmond: fifth Viscount Castlewood, son of Francis and Rachel
Beatrix Esmond: Francis and Rachel’s daughter
Thomas Esmond: third Viscount Castlewood; Henry’s father
Isabel Esmond: Thomas’s wife
James Stuart: exiled pretender to the throne of England

Quotations:

“‘Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so hard, Master Henry—every man of every nation has done that—’tis the living up to it that is difficult.”

To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.

So a man dashes a fine vase down and despises it for being broken. It may be worthless —true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?

As there a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret even to him who has it in his own breast.

If there be some thoughts and actions of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with shame, sure there are some which he may be proud to own and remember: forgiven injuries, conquered temptations (now and then), and difficulties vanquished by endurance.

From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress, there’s no pang that is not bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty.

Our great thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and immortal.

My thoughts thirty years later:

I remember enjoying the story of young Henry Esmond very much. It’s an exercise in historical fiction for Thackeray, set in the 1700’s. The book was full of intrigue and historical characters that mingled with the fictional characters. The Virginians, a book I never read, is a sequel to Henry Esmond.

Semicolon’s September: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

Advanced Reading Survey: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Aug11

I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid t

Author: Prior to Vanity Fair, Thackeray had written various short pieces under such imaginative pseudonyms as Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Charles Yellowplush, and George Fitz-Boodle. Vanity Fair was written for publication in monthly installments over a period of a year and a half, and it is said that as each publication deadline neared, the printer’s boy sometimes had to wait in the passage to carry off the pages as they were finished. At any rate, Vanity Fair became quite successful and gave Thackeray the means and popularity to go on writing other novels.

Characters:
Amelia Sedley Osbourne: a young entlewoman
Becky Sharp: a cunning and beautiful orphan girl
Joseph Sedley: Amelia’s brother
Rawdon Crawley: an aristocrat and rake who marries Becky
George Osbourne: Amelia’s first husband
Miss Crawley: Rawdon’s wealthy aunt
Lord Steyne: A close friend of Becky’s
William Dobbin: Amelia’s protector and second husband

Quotations:
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion. (p. 9-10)

I, for my part, have known a five-pound note to interpose and knock up a half century’s attachment between two brethren; and I can’t but admire, as I think what a fine and durable thing Love is among worldly people. (p. 93)

She did not dare to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had given her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to recall it. (p. 173)

And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man’s moral senses —the very easiest to be deadened when wakened; and in some never wakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame or punishment; but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair. (p. 443)

It is all Vanity, to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef? (p. 526)

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? (p. 728)

Thoughts and Tidbits Thirty Years later:

According to Wikipedia, “the character of Becky Sharp is based in part on Thackeray’s maternal grandmother Harriet Becher. She abandoned her husband and children when she eloped with Captain Charles Christie. In 1806 shortly after the death of Christie and her husband she married Edward Butler, another army officer. Thackeray lived with his grandmother in Paris in the 1830s and again in the 1840s.”

I never knew until a few years ago that Gone With the Wind was inspired by Vanity Fair. It makes perfect sense that Scarlett O’Hara and Becky Sharp are essentially the same characters each in a different place and time. Vanity Fair and Gone With the Wind.

Carrie at Mommy Brain hates Becky Sharp.

What I wrote about Thackeray and Vanity Fair on Thackeray’s birthday.

You can read Vanity Fair at Project Gutenberg., but it’s rather long. I suggest a nice cuddly 700+ page book, paperback or hardcover.

Eccclesiastes 1:1-3:
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?