The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon by William Thackeray (2011 TBR Challenge #2)

After downing his first man in a duel at the age of fifteen, young Barry flees Ireland to become a soldier in the Seven Years' War. In later years he'll become a gambler, a fortune hunter, and finally, to his great satisfaction, a lord. A thoroughly unreliable narrator, Barry claims nobility and honour and love in one breath, and in the next will describe his cheats, deceptions, and base villainy.

Also known as The Luck of Barry Lyndon, this is a book I've been putting it off for four or five years. As usual it was nothing like as scary as I'd feared. Told in the first-person and in a style I'm informed is picaresque, this is a blackly funny and razor-sharp satire that leaves no one unscathed, whether rich or poor, Irish or English or Prussian, man or woman.

Barry himself is one of the greatest rogues and scoundrels ever set to the page. His story reminded me of both Fielding's Tom Jones and Thackeray's own Vanity Fair in its scope, cynicism and humour. Often, Thackeray just made me laugh. Here's his depiction of two lovers' banter, from early in the book:

"No, Norelia," said the Captain (for it was the fashion of those times for lovers to call themselves by the most romantic names out of novels), "except for you and four others, I vow before all the gods, my heart has never felt the soft flame!"
"Ah! You men, you men, Eugenio!" said she ... "your passion is not equal to ours. We are like – like some plant I've read of – we bear but one flower and then we die!"

In the same vein here's young Barry:

"Mark this: come what will of it, I swear I'll fight the man who pretends to the hand of Nora Brady. I'll follow him, if it's into the church, and meet him there. I'll have his blood, or he shall have mine; and this riband shall be found dyed in it. Yet and if I'll kill him, I'll pin it on his breast, and then she may go and take back her token." This I said because I was very much excited at the time, and because I had not read novels and romantic plays for nothing.

But it's not all fun and games. There's some powerful commentary too on the grim reality of war, and at times Thackeray's depiction of a corrupt world seems unrelentingly cynical - Barry's own opportunism and selfishness is matched only by the greed and dishonour of those around him. However, as the book progresses his deeds grow blacker and blacker, his delusions of grandeur and blindness to his own flaws ever greater, and at last he tips over the edge from anti-hero to villain.

Despite the darkness of the later stages of the book and some minor quibbles (some totally unnecessary footnoting from Thackeray), this is a great journey with a great character. Just one more quote, one that made me LOL:

"But listen: you are an Englishman?"
"That I am," said the fellow, with an air of the utmost superiority. "Your honour could tell that by my haccent."
I knew he was and therefore might offer him a bribe.

My 12 books for the 2011 TBR Challenge