The Content Reader

Ever since I read Vanity Fair by Thackeray, I am one of his fans. So, when the Brontë Reading Group in Brussels had his The History of Pendennis on the list, I was happy. Until I realised that it is a book of over 900 pages and I only had four days to read it! A slight misjudgment on my part, you could say! I read the e-book that is. Since the discussions in the Reading group are always very lively and interesting, I don’t like to go there if I have not read the book. A big effort and an eight hour read the same day as the meeting was the cure. I managed to finish it in time to take a shower and get dressed! As usual Jones had prepared us with questions to consider while reading the book. Here are just a few of them with my comments. Does Pendennis qualify as one of the "loose baggy monsters'' that Henry James criticised among nineteenth-century novels? I like this question, and I understand exactly what Henry James meant. There are so many thick books from this ...