Kay's Bookshelf

There are no limitations to the things that can happen in this book. The Norse god Balder is a yard-gnome, a WWII jazz player is still alive, fire giants are roaming the world and a certain band is transported through space and time. Just so you know what to expect :)

One of my favorite stops is what I took to be a satire on the American society of today (parts of it of course): a place where all the children were only allowed to think happy thoughts, and everyone was told he/she is special. Censorship was rampant, for example all the books have been removed from the library for all sorts of reasons (Winnie the Pooh because “Bears don’t really talk. Might confuse the little ones.“, comic books because “Superheroes have unattainable powers, and are therefore not relatable and might make kids feel bad about themselves.“, and so on), all but a very boring self-help one. A very important element of that world are the smoothies — everyone has access to as many smoothies as he/she wants, with any taste in the world. At least in theory because in practice all of them taste like vanilla. For a very good reason too:

““Oh, they’re all vanilla,” Ruth says. “At first, we gave people a choice. But then we found they didn’t like the blueberry as much as they thought they would or they wished they had gotten the strawberry instead, just like their best friends did. It was a big bummer. So we simplified things for them. Now, they can order whatever they want, but in the end, it’s all the same flavor. You’re guaranteed the same experience every single time. And you’re having the same experience as everybody else. Cuts down on things like dissatisfaction, envy, competitiveness, longing, regret. All that bad stuff.””

Another thing I liked is the way Don Quixote is repeatedly mentioned. It took me a while, but eventually I did noticed the fact that this book is, in a way, a parallel to that book. Cameron is a noble knight, travelling on a quest to save the world (not to mention the car he drives is a Cadillac Rocinante).
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The characters are atypical and quite interesting. One cannot help but feeling sorry for Cameron, whose life was already going nowhere and who got an incurable disease on top of it all. He is a good guy, albeit somewhat misguided at times, and his sense of humor made the book actually fun, despite its dark underlying theme. His sidekick is Gonzo, a little person who’s also a hypochondriac (it’s how the two met, in the hospital while Gonzo was waiting for some test results), but who never let his shortcomings get in the way of doing things (well, let’s rephrase that to “important things”, because for example he never dares eating anything but grilled cheese when in a restaurant). Another original character is Dulcie, the pink-haired angel with graffiti on her wings — I liked her too, and I would have loved to see a bit more of her.

A short quote to give a sense of the writing style:

I creep up the stairs with a fry pan as my only defense, and despite the fact that my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s, it strikes me as funny. Greetings, ax murderer! I was just wondering how you like your eggs?

Thoughts on the ending: I am not certain I got it right, so I am not certain what my feelings are. Summing it up in one word: “interesting” :)
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What I liked most: show spoiler

What I liked least: There is nothing that impressed me in a negative way. Any other book would have seemed too random at times but the author has managed to make it all look believable :)

Recommend it to? Anyone interested in a surreal dark comedy novel, of course. :)

Buy it on Amazon.com | Buy it at bookdepository.co.uk | Libba Bray’s site | FollowTheFeather.com

Written by the same author:
A Great and Terrible Beauty | Rebel Angels | The Sweet Far Thing

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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This is a book very hard to sum up in just a few words (there are many subplots, political satire, references to just about anything, and a cast of many bizarre characters). It is, nevertheless, pretty much as any reader of this series has come to expect: a wild ride through a world of strangeness.

As usual though, the details are too funny to be ignored. Such as the translating carbon paper named rossetionery (a reference to the Rosetta stone) and the fact that last year’s Booker speed-writing winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin (a reference to the very prolific romance author Barbara Cartland). Some of the politically correct names for various states are also funny, such as (the currently non-existent) Landen being referred to as having “an existence problem“, whereas the dead people are called “spiritually bereft“. My favorite example of such wooden language being the part where the president went missing, so his security people called Thursday and explained her that “We find ourselves in a head-of-state deficit condition” :)

Throughout the series Thursday is very much like Kinsey Milhone from the Alphabet series: resourceful, courageous, and smart. These days I can hardly think of one of them without being instantly reminded of the other. And yet there are parts (in this particular book most of all), when Thursday has another dimension: she is a loving wife and mother. While a bit hard to reconcile with her tough exterior, her new-found side doesn’t diminish her strengths, just makes her all the more interesting. I was a bit disappointed to see that my other female favorite character, Granny Next, was too old in this book to actually do something memorable, but it was nice to see her nevertheless. And Hamlet, well, he is worried about his being perceived by people as a ditherer, but he has trouble making up his mind even when faced with an easy decision like what kind of coffee he wants (“To espresso or to latte, that is the question“). He does nevertheless try to fix this, attending Conflict Resolution classes, but luckily for all of us he realized in the end that people enjoy his play precisely because of his moral issues, not despite them.

Another thing I likes was the light shed over some things mentioned long ago, in Book 1. For example, we finally get to know who the much-mentioned Millon De Floss is (we already knew he was Thursday’s biographer but he makes his first actual appearance in this book). Also in Book 1, Thursday is mentioned to have left a weapon hidden near her own self sometime in the future; in this book we get to witness that particular scene. And, my favorite, there is a reference of a young man seen at Thursday’s wedding (I had to go back and check, the young man is indeed there and he tells Thursday that “If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try and dissuade him.“, while both Thursday and Landen thought he looked a bit familiar) — and that young man is now revealed to be a grown-up Friday :)

A quote about BookWorld:

The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author’s initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeated itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak.

Thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most: show spoiler

What I liked least: show spoiler

Recommend it to? This book is the fourth in what I understand to be a series of eight (five books have currently been released, while a sixth is scheduled to be published in January 2011). As such, although I have found the book very enjoyable (my favorite in the series so far), I can only recommend it to people who have read the previous three.

This book is a sequel to:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots

Written by the same author:
Shades of Grey

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Expect this to be a review filled with quotes because I don’t think my own words alone could give a good enough idea of what the book is actually like :)

There are many characters in this book (as there are many people in a squadron). Some of them appear more often, some of them rather rarely. The one who appears the most is the one I have considered the main character and, coincidentally, is my favorite one. Yossarian is, at first, described by one of his friends as having “an unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him“. At first the reader sees him as somewhat ridiculous, and doesn’t know what to make of him. The same can be said about the book, filled at first with all sorts of absurd episodes, seeming strange but not necessarily to be taken seriously. Even the timeline is messed up, the events being presented in what looks like random order.

And yet, as the pages are turned, more and more facets of Yossarian (and of the story itself) come to light. The reader gets to see that, far from being the paranoid and irrational creature presented in the first pages, Yossarian is actually “an intelligent person of great moral character“. He is indeed afraid of dying (aren’t we all?), but most of all he doesn’t want to waste his life uselessly. The same happens to the book. Even the timeline fixes itself, and, as events progress, more and more important issues are being revealed. In a war people die. Some profit off it. Some sacrifice the lives of others for their personal glory. The naive ones get killed. All these are obvious in a way even before reading, but they are made more poignant by the events in the book. The author doesn’t emit judgments, he just narrates the facts, and it’s these facts that are the striking part.

Now consider all this wrapped in a thick layer of sheer absurdity. Yossarian’s superiors keep raising the number of missions a pilot has to fly before being sent home (they do this so often that there are pilots, like Hungry Joe, who completed the “tour of duty” several times, because the number of necessary missions changed before anyone who completed the previous number had time to receive his papers and go home). The efficacy of a bomb run is not measured by the number of targets hit, or whether they were hit at all, but by how nice a pattern they offer when thrown. One of the characters is considered dead after the plane he officially was on exploded, despite the said character being right among the people who observed the accident. The mess hall officer is involved in some shady business involving supplies, a business that occasioned his being offered an important position in almost every city in the world (he is the mayor of Malta, the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, the Sheik of Araby, the Vice-Shah of Oran, and many more), and also enabled him to fight on both sides of the war.

In this context, the idea of the Catch-22 feels right at home. These days, a “Catch-22″ is the name one gives to a no-win situation, due to circular and self-contradicting logic. Which is the exact meaning the term had in the book, as, whenever there was a certain type of situation, someone was bound to invoke the said catch. Even if the actual wording varies now and then (“‘Catch-22,’ [...] ‘says you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.’“, “The men don’t have to sign Piltchard and Wren’s loyalty oath if they don’t want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don’t.“, “Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.“), the feeling of illogicality and contradiction is the same. Interestingly enough no one has ever seen the Catch-22 in writing (Yossarian thinks it doesn’t even exist), but everyone obeys it because the Catch-22 itself states that no one wanting to apply it has to show it to the one it’s being applied on.

A few more quotes that I liked:
The first appearance of the infamous catch:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

One of the absurd moments that flourish throughout the book:

‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’

The question upset them, because Snowden had been killed over Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and seized the controls away from Huple.

The corporal played it dumb. ‘What?’ he asked.

[...]

‘Où sont les Neigedens d’antan?‘ Yossarian said to make it easier for him.

‘Parlez en anglais, for Christ’s sake,’ said the corporal. ‘Je ne parle pas français.‘

An idea I found cool because I myself have never thought of it:

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

And a description of one of the characters, Major Major Major Major:

He was polite to his elders, who disliked him. Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did unto others exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery or coveted his neighbor’s ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major’s elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist.

Thoughts on the ending: I am not sure how I feel about the ending. I mean, I definitely like it a lot, I just cannot decide whether it was simply perfect or just good. The book ends with show spoiler

What I liked most: The sheer absurdity of some of the situations, especially near the beginning. To mention a random one, Chief White Halfoat, an Indian, told the story of his tribe, who was chased from place to place because every time they set up camp anywhere, that place was brimming with oil. In Chief’s own words:

We were human divining rods. Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits, and soon every oil company in the world had technicians chasing us around. We were always on the move. [...] Soon whole drilling crews were following us around with all their equipment just to get the jump on each other. Companies began to merge just so they could cut down on the number of people they had to assign to us. But the crowd in back of us kept growing. We never got a good night’s sleep. When we stopped, they stopped. When we moved, they moved, chuckwagons, bulldozers, derricks, generators. We were a walking business boom, and we began to receive invitations from some of the best hotels just for the amount of business we would drag into town with us. Some of those invitations were mighty generous, but we couldn’t accept any because we were Indians and all the best hotels that were inviting us wouldn’t accept Indians as guests.

Or, another random one, Doc Daneeka’s indignation at his word being doubted when he has declared himself unfit for war (note that ha was a perfectly healthy man):

They had to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service. You’d think my word would be enough, wouldn’t you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn’t, and they sent this guy around just to make sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It’s a terrible thing,’ Doc Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. ‘It’s a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he loves.’

Or another random one (last one, I promise):

As a member of the Action Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the case against Clevinger as presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf.

What I liked least: I cannot say anything remotely bad about this book. I was a bit worried at first, when the characters were introduced and there seemed to be so many of them, enough to lose track of, but with time I got to know everyone so I was able to tell everyone apart.

Recommend it to? You know, this is one of the most controverted books out there. I was amazed to notice there are plenty of people who started on it but put it down after a while (lots more than with other books). On Goodreads for example the book has at the moment over 1300 one-star ratings (presumably all of them from people who couldn’t finish it). However there are also 18402 five-star ratings (yup, more than 10 times the bad ones), making one think there must be something to this book after all :)

Subjectively, I for one have liked the book very much. I got a bit lost in characters at first but I persevered and I am immensely glad I did so. This makes me, of course, to want to recommend the book to everyone around me. And I do. With the caveat that, well, some people find the first hundred pages a bit hard to get through.

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Due to this being only a novella the characters are probably a bit less fleshed than the could have been. Nevertheless I think the author did a great job in portraying them. It was a bit amusing actually to see the antithesis between the “perfect” wives (their only interest in the world being to have the house always spotlessly clean) and the “others”, the normal ones (with normal houses, messy now and then, and also with normal interests outside the home). I liked the way the whole book seemed to say “I’ll take personality over extreme cleanness every day”, by always emphasizing the differences between the two. Just think that, for example, all the latest female newcomers in town are likable and easy to relate to: from Joanna herself, to smart mouthed Bobbie (my favorite), to their friend Charmaine who couldn’t help mentioning star signs about every sentence or so, to children’s books author Ruthanne. All very opposite to the rest of the Stepford wives, with so little personality one couldn’t tell them apart.

On the whole, while what happened to the poor town women saddened and scared me a little, what crept me out the most was the change in the men. Both Joanna’s family and Bobbie’s were happy ones when first moving in to town, with husbands that were both understanding and supportive to their wives. The very idea of them turning (seemingly) all of a sudden into, after all, their exact opposite (so much so that they never hesitated in doing bad things to the very people they previously swore to love and to cherish) made me more uncomfortable than everything else. Joanna and Walter entered the story as a tight team, going strong — no more than a few months later that team’s members ended up in arms, one against the other, leaving Joanna no one to turn to when the need arose. So very sad.

What I liked most: The very idea the book is based on — quite an original one for the 70s (or at least so it seems to me). I am also amused at the fact that the book and its subsequent movies have so made their way in the public consciousness that the term “Stepford wife” has actually entered common use :)

What I liked least: It’s not that big a deal but I find it a bit hard to believe that no one ever wondered what happens back then, when women first started changing. From the newspaper articles Joanna read at the library we can see it was a gradual change, how come no one started worrying seeing more and more of their acquaintances radically different from one day to another? (it can be argued, of course, that perhaps some women did worry and they either left or were forced into silence — either way, as I said, it’s not that big a deal and it doesn’t affect the story flow at all).

Recommend it to? Everyone. It’s a short and captivating read.


The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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It might seem strange but Arabella is a very down to Earth person, smart,kind and very well read (very beautiful too). She would be utterly perfect if it weren’t for that fault of hers: believing that life respects what she calls “The Laws of Romance” by the letter. She is very naive in that sense (understandably so for one who had no contact with the real world whatsoever), but her naivete and her confusion only make her more likable to the reader instead of detracting from her charm. Her suitor, Mr. Glanville (as opposite to the romantic heros as can be) is a man filled with common sense, captivated by Arabella’s charms enough to pardon and accept her quirks. He does hate when she’s making a fool of herself (most of the times when she has company) — but who wouldn’t? I totally commiserate with him each and every time (which, as I said, doesn’t stop me from liking Arabella quite a lot).

It is very amusing to notice the parallel the author does between Cervantes’ hero (Don Quixote) and Arabella. His mind has been “turned” after reading many novels of chivalry he took as truth; Arabella’s romance novels have been the source of her illusion. He thinks he’s a hero looking for Adventure and a romantic heroin; she sees herself as the heroin waiting for her adventurous hero (not minding a few adventures of her own along the way). Don Quixote thinks he should praise beauty everywhere he sees it; Arabella is waiting for her beauty to be praised — and more :)

The ending seemed to me a bit rushed, as everything changes and concludes in the last three chapters or so. I think I would have liked it a lot more if the author would have imagined a way for Arabella herself to gradually realize her mistakes, the differences between her world and the real one. It might have taken her a while (and to be honest I have no idea how this might have been brought about), but it would have made the book more authentic and all the more enjoyable (in my opinion of course).

A thing I’ve been amazed at was how actual the story (written about three hundred years ago) still is. Not only the style (other than some variations in spelling) seemed recently written (excepting, of course, the parts when the “language of romance” was used), but also the topic: I’ve been reading only recently about a theory that warned people who love romantic comedies (I being one of them) that they are rather bad for one’s love life, because it makes people expect impossible things from their relationship (the fact that if your partner truly loves you he/she should be able to read your mind, and other such things). The very thing that happened to Arabella (her expectations of life have been really twisted by the stories in her books), only more extreme in her case (because, after all, she’s a character in a book and as such she has to be a bit more special than normal people in order to captivate people’s interest :) )

What I liked most: I have been mightily amused at all the quirks Arabella (and her books) had :) :) Here come the quotes:
First of all, here’s how Arabella usually talked (in this particular instance she thought herself about to be captured by a ravisher, so she fled her castle with only one maid; she fainted and the maid went to get help; when Arabella came to her senses and found herself alone she spoke thus):

Alas! unfortunate Maid that I am! cried she, weeping excessively, questionless I am betrayed by her on whose Fidelity I relied, and who was acquainted with my most secret Thoughts: She is now with my Ravisher, directing his Pursuit, and I have no Means of escaping from his Hands! Cruel and ungrateful Wench, thy unparalleled Treachery grieves me no less than all my other Misfortunes: But why do I say, Her Treachery is unparalleled? Did not the wicked Arianta betray her Mistress into the Power of her insolent Lover? Ah! Arabella, thou art not single in thy Misery, since the divine Mandana was, like thyself, the Dupe of a mercenary Servant.

The way men were supposed to act in books (part of the imagined adventures of a wannabe romance hero, when he found out his beloved was in trouble):

Scarce had he finished these cruel Words, when I, who all the time he had been speaking, beheld him with a dying Eye, sunk down at his Feet in a Swoon; which continued so long, that he began to think me quite dead: However I at last opened my Eyes; but it was only to pour forth a River of Tears, and to utter Complaints, which might have moved the most obdurate Heart.

(this one amuses me the most, I find a man who faints and then cries “a river of tears” quite ridiculous in the circumstances :D )

One of my favorite parts was also when “the unfortunate Bellmour” starts to recount his (completely fabricated in order to impress Arabella) adventures, in the hearing of people who knew him (and his real life) since he was a child:

It shall suffice, therefore, to inform you, that my Father, being a peaceable Man, fond of Retirement and Tranquillity, made no Attempts to recover the Sovereignty from which his Ancestors had been unjustly expelled; but quietly beheld the Kingdom of Kent in the Possession of other Masters, while he contented himself with the Improvement of that small Pittance of Ground, which was all that the unhappy Prince Veridomer, my Grandfather, was able to bequeath to him.

Hey-day! cried Sir Charles, Will you new-christen your Grandfather, when he has been in his Grave these Forty Years? I knew honest Sir Edward Bellmour very well, though I was but a Youth when he died; but I believe no Person in Kent ever gave him the Title of Prince Veridomer: Fie! fie! these are idle Brags.

What I liked least: The book is quite long and at times repetitious, making the reader (or at least me) lose his/her patience with Arabella’s foibles now and then. I really really liked Arabella, but seeing her making the same mistakes for the tenth time didn’t really help the matters.

Recommend it? Yes :)

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This story is said to have been written in order to amuse some kids on Christmas Eve. It probably enjoyed a great success as it really is a very amusing story, I almost laughed out loud a few times.

The characters are very amusing in themselves – for example Angelica, who is a very ordinary little person, with practically no accomplishments at all, is very convinced that she is the most everything in the country (most beautiful, most merciful, most wise, etc.). Bulbo is sort of the male equivalent of Angelica – even if we don’t know very much about his former life before presenting himself to ask for Angelica’s hand. Giglio is probably smart but more than a little lazy and usually speaks in blank verses, while Rosalba is a paragon of perfection :) (so much so that not even lions want to do her harm). Fairy Blackstick is the most interesting character of them all, as, after trying her hand at all sort of mischiefs (for example making Sleeping Beauty sleep for all those years), she now is a very respectable old lady, using magic only when absolutely necessary.

What I liked most: The way Fairy Blackstick realized that, while giving someone a very good gift (such as to be loved by all others) only made one vain and hard to stand, giving people “a little misfortune” in their lives helps building their character, turning them into better human beings.

What I liked least: The story was a little too long and too overcomplicated for my taste. I could have skipped the last eighth almost entirely. But that’s just me :)

Recommend it? Yes, it’s beautifully written.

A random quote:

‘Give up my sword! Giglio give up his sword!’ cried the Prince;
and stepping well forward on to the balcony, the royal youth, WITHOUT PREPARATION, delivered a speech so magnificent, that no report can do justice to it. It was all in blank verse (in which, from this time, he invariably spoke, as more becoming
his majestic station). It lasted for three days and three nights, during which not a single person who heard him was tired, or remarked the difference between daylight and dark. The soldiers only cheering tremendously, when occasionally, once in nine hours, the Prince paused to suck an orange, which Jones took out of the bag. He explained, in terms which we say we shall not attempt to convey, the whole history of the previous transaction, and his determination not only not to give up his sword, but to assume his rightful crown; and at the end of this extraordinary, this truly GIGANTIC effort, Captain Hedzoff flung up his helmet, and cried, ‘Hurray! Hurray! Long live King Giglio!’

Written by the same author:
Vanity Fair

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Even though the story most deals with the two aforementioned characters, I think that Thackeray’s intention was actually to make a study on the society of that time. Probably this is one of the reasons why we are presented with a whole lot of characters (only one or two couldn’t have had all the faults Thackeray wanted to describe). The novel itself is subtitled as “A novel without a hero”, meaning that no character is perfect, all of them having their various flaws (but various qualities too). To take but a few examples:

• Amelia Sedley/Osborne – she has a heart of gold, taking care or everyone’s needs before her own (with probably the exception of poor Mr. Dobbin), always quick to forgive and forget. She has a very simple mind though and spends years of her life idolizing her dead husband who she considers a true angel even if he didn’t treat her very well when alive (probably one example when being quick to forgive and forget is not an actual quality). No man alive can compare with her George so she spends many years alone (even though she sort of does accept Mr. Dobbin as an admirer, she offers nothing in return – how could she even think of betraying that angel of a husband?). Interestingly enough she does recover her memory back in the end, how mistreated she was etc., and moves on to a better life as Mrs. Dobbin. But oh how many years were uselessly wasted… Her manner of idolizing normal people manifests itself also on her relationship with her son, whom she sees as completely flawless and whom she spoils rotten.
• George Osborne – he struck me as a very uncaring kind of guy, or maybe he just was like that because he couldn’t love Amelia’s simplicity all the way. Unfortunately he died quite young so the character is less developed that some others. I think it would have been interesting to see how he grows old. He does see Amelia’s qualities and deeply admires them, but they are not what he needs. Probably that’s why he’s so taken with Becky when she lavishes her charms on him, so much so that he even wants to elope with her.
• Rebecca Sharp/Crawley – she’s very sharp and her name fits her well. But that’s about the only good thing I found in her (some admire her for the fact that she supposedly helped Amelia marry Dobbin; I don’t, firstly because of her brusque manner of doing so and secondly because Amelia’s decision was already taken anyway). Oh, she does have one other quality, she can treat her husband very well when she wants to. Other than that she has no scruples whatsoever, she’d do anything in order to get to be a real lady and have no financial worries (not that she doesn’t feel very well when poor and surrounded by people of doubtful quality either).
• Rawdon Crawley – at first he is so like George one couldn’t tell the one from the other. A party-loving card-playing officer with a passion for horses. The difference is that he’s deeply in love with his wife, admiring her wit (probably because he was quite simple himself). This changes him though, and for the better. Having a child changes him even more, making him become a perfectly decent character in the end.
• William Dobbin – whatever else can be said about him, we cannot deny him his loyalty. He falls in love with Amelia the very first time he sees her and he loves her unwaveringly for more than fifteen years, without any encouragement from her side. He doesn’t want anything in return, he is happy just to be able to be around her or at least help her from a distance. Well, at least until the end when he finally realizes that the Amelia he loved isn’t exactly like the real Amelia so he tries to sever his ties with her (even thinking of marrying Glorvina MacDowd). The force of habit is stronger in the end so when Amelia calls him he returns faithfully at her feet, never to leave again.
• Jos Sedley – Amelia’s obese brother, selfish but very rich. He’s also very vain and not very clever, so it’s quite funny to see him exploited by Becky in the end and how smartly she manipulated him. He seems to lack loyalty entirely, for example when his parents become bankrupt he doesn’t care very much (he does send them money but that’s everything he does for them, without even asking whether he sends enough to cover their needs).
• Mr. and Mrs. Sedley – Amelia’s parents, go through quite a change when they lose their fortune. They are quite loyal to each other, at least that is a constant. However when they were rich they were quite kind, treating everyone well and loving their Amelia. Becoming poor at an old age changes them unpleasantly, they become to resent Amelia’s little expenses (all for the sake of her son) and always feel as they are not cared enough for, not given enough attention.
• Mr. Osborne – George’s father is one of my least liked characters. With him everything is measured in social importance. When he a poor young fellow he was helped a lot by Amelia’s father and he now owns a very flourishing business. While back then it would have been an honor for his son to marry the daughter of his benefactor, now that his pockets are loaded he dreams an alliance with someone with a title. He’s very disappointed when his son disobeys him and marries Amelia and doesn’t hesitate to disinherit him. He is far from being a good man, however the trait I disliked more in this guy was that when his old benefactor, Mr. Sedley, had some financial issues, not only he didn’t helped him a bit but he also helped bring him down.

To tell the truth I loved the author’s style, dripping with irony and humor, so much so that there were parts where you didn’t even know whether he was being serious or not, did he actually admire this or that lady or not (usually the obvious answer was no, but there were one or two occasions I couldn’t actually say for sure). I do
recommend this book, especially to everyone who has a taste for 18th century society books or for studying human nature in general.

Written by the same author:
The Rose and the Ring


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