I loved this book! I wasn't expecting to. Honestly, I'm not sure what I was expecting. I had seen the movie with Reese Witherspoon and I had heard that she made Rebecca much too sympathetic (which she did) but I wasn't expecting something so satirical. Thackeray makes fun of each and every one of his characters mercilessly and it's great fun! All of his characters are caricatures so don't expect them to be full-fleshed people. They are paper puppets who exist purely for Thackeray to mock and ridicule and watching him do so is immensely enjoyable.
I think this is his version of Trollope's "The Way We Live Now". He's making fun of, not only his characters, but of society and the way it operated in his day. He relentlessly points out and makes fun of all of society's little idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Despite it's size (a mere 800 pages) it's not nearly as formidable as it looks. Thackeray's writing style is very conversational and, therefore, very light and fluffy and easy to breeze through. Before I knew it I was half-way through!
Another thing I hadn't realized before reading this book was that Rebecca is merely one of two main characters. Her friend, Amelia, is the true heroine of the book but I don't think she even appeared in the movie. I can understand why. She's boring. The only reason I kept reading about her was because I loved watching Thackeray make fun of her and the people around her. Without that there is absolutely nothing engaging about her so leaving her out of the movie was an excellent choice. Not to mention there's quite enough material to cover with just Rebecca's adventures (like I said, the book is 800 pages long! It covers a lot of ground!)
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