Sarah May

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray is a rather overlooked classic in my opinion that doesn’t get the recognition that others do. In fact, this is the only retelling/modernisation of the story that I know! This time, Becky is a young woman with ambitions to be a journalist and hide her lower class background. It’s more brutal and vicious that the original, possibly because the stakes are so such higher. This worked for me sometimes; other times I felt that Becky was too callous which made her difficult to like.

Becky is determined to get out of her small town and paints a resume of her (non-existent) experiences as a nanny. She gets a job with the Crawley family, owners and editors of multiple UK newspapers including tabloids. It’s here that she first meets Amelia, much more skilled with children and also desperately in love with George, who Becky knows from her youth. The story jumps with Becky’s promotions, from journalist to editor to CEO of the Mercury, a tabloid with a rumoured secret room with dirt on everyone in the UK. Becky’s quest to spill the secrets and attempt to write the wrongs of society is unrelenting, even at the cost of her marriage and family. Where will her ambition stop?

Given the timing of the novel, it’s easy to make links with the tabloid phone hacking scandals in the UK (although I don’t know all the details being Australian). Becky’s thirst for a scoop starts with the love letters from a princess to an ex-serviceman (nobody is ever named but it’s easy to make your own assumptions). When her plan to share (and get a promotion) goes awry, she becomes ever more determined to be in the know earlier, even if this means phone tapping. This is the point where I started to like Becky’s character less, as she railroads over anyone in her way. If you’re not familiar with the characters from the original novel, it can be difficult to get a good idea of who they are and their roles in Becky’s rise (and downfall). It was great to see Pitt, George and Rawdon reimagined but their characters weren’t deeply fleshed out and are there for Becky to toy with.

The story also goes back into Becky’s childhood periodically, to show the various events that shaped her. Sometimes they were directly related to what was happening in the present day, sometimes not which disrupted the pacing for me. The first part of the book is quite slow as Becky makes it to and then upwards at the newspaper. Some parts are quite confronting as to Becky’s absolute disregard for others (but without a clear motivation, except ‘the quest for the truth’). At other times, the novel seems to skip over parts that could have been quite juicy. For example, the newspaper is very clearly a boys’ club, but apart from Becky noting no female toilets on the executive floor and some disregarding her for her gender, it’s not explored. I felt sometimes the book was too loyal to the original plot points (George and Becky’s relationship for instance), instead of going into themes for the modern day. It’s well written, but the story didn’t really gel for me.

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Rebecca Sharp is determined to slough off her background and be a success. She re-invents herself as a public schoolgirl and manages to gain a foothold in the tabloid press. With a nose for good journalism and a ruthless streak Becky rises high but at a huge personal cost.
This book purports to be a re-telling of the Thackeray novel 'Vanity Fair' with an updated setting and there are many parallels. However it also draws heavily on the story of Rebekah Wade, an infamous tabloid editor and friend to the movers and shakers of the late 1990s. Lots of real-life stories are altered slightly and aspects of the original novel are lost but what emerges is a really entertaining read.… (meer)

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this novel, a modern twist on Thackeray's Vanity Fair, even though I was unimpressed with a similar reworking (The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp by Sarra Manning) a few years ago. I've now decided that perhaps Becky should stay in the nineteenth century.

On the surface, turning modern - or 1990s - Rebecca Sharp into a scandal-hungry tabloid journalist is clever, because the British press have precisely no moral centre and will cheerfully destroy other people to get what they want, much like the main character in Thackeray's 'novel without a hero'. However, Sarah May seems to have modelled her Becky on Rebekah Brooks, the poisonous News of the World editor who somehow escaped justice for phone hacking in 2014, and I really didn't want to read about a character like that. May closely follows Brooks' career and even uses Millie Dowler's abduction and murder, which I thought was pretty low.

On the flip side, there is heavy emphasis on how Becky's early life somehow excuses her personality and behaviour, throwing in all the clichés, including a neglectful and borderline abusive single mother who is dragging her daughter up on a council estate and sending her to the local comprehensive instead of the nearby private school where her mother is a cleaner. Modern authors can't seem to let Becky stand on her own motivations and actions, which drives me mad! She is not a victim, she's a survivor.

Also, May stresses that she wanted to give Becky back her voice, rather than relying on the (male) omniscient narrator in Thackeray's novel, but Becky's first person version of events somehow made me like her even less, with her constant sneering analysis, and also reduced favourite characters like Dobbin to token roles lacking in depth.

For anyone familiar with the self-destruction of the News of the World, the new version of Becky will not hold any surprises, from 'the Princess' and her polo playing lover to the disappearance of a teenage girl and the abuse of her family's trust. Reality meets fiction in a hybrid take on Vanity Fair, with Becky overcoming poverty and obscurity to become a successful yet hated newspaper editor, and marrying a man for his family connections while carrying on with her friend's husband (implying that there is a deeper connection between Becky and George Osborne, who was there for her after her mother killed herself, rather than a clash of two selfish people).

Too much Rebekah and not enough Becky for my taste, sorry… (meer)