Vanity Fair by William Thackeray is one of my favourite novels, and its last paragraph is one of my favourite conclusions to a book.
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? – Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
The very last sentence is memorable enough on its own, as it reminds the reader of the theatricality of the whole thing, but what sticks in my mind is how sad the ending actually is. That despite the fact that merely a few pages before we got our supposedly happy ending, complete with the dramatic last-minute dash and declaration of love from our heroine to the man who had hopelessly loved her for years. I love the BBC adaptation with Natasha Little as Becky Sharp (unlike the Reese Witherspoon version, it didn’t sugarcoat the fact that Becky is a horrible person), but I think it loses a lot by skipping over the sadness of the hero no longer caring for his most-cherished prize.
Saw Trainwreck yesterday. It’s been forever since I watched a comedy at the cinema – I think my last one was the first Hangover movie – or a chick flick for that matter which wasn’t a costume drama. This one got good reviews and I’ve been hearing all sorts of raves about Amy Schumer in the last few months on the US-based entertainment sites, so I looked forward to it quite a bit. I walked out with some mixed feelings: while now I’m also happy to jump on the Amy Schumer bandwagon, the movie itself wasn’t as good as its leading lady. I’d go as far as to say it was pretty damn ordinary.
Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection by Isaac Asimov
