Book: Tom Jones
Posted in Academic Pursuits and tagged with Reading on December 26, 2007I just finished reading Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. This is a great book that I’ve really enjoyed, but it sure is long. My copy was 850 pages. When you add in all the turmoil of this semester, it took me almost 6 months to complete it.
Henry Fielding’s style is wonderful. He can go for pages without saying much, but it isn’t because he’s describing the scenery. Instead, he spends lots of time chasing rabbits, but they are almost always funny.
Fielding puts a lot of himself into his book and isn’t too high to make fun of his own profession of novel-writing. Even the title character has huge flaws, and Fielding doesn’t ice over them. Only the beautiful Sophia is perfect.
This book has a larger vocabulary than any I’ve ever read. At first I would take the time to look up the words, but I got kind of tired of it. He tends to use a lot of those words over and over, so you figure them out.
Another charm to this book is the book’s use of names: the benevolent fatherly figure is Mr. Allworthy, the perfect woman is Sophia, the foolish servant type is Partridge, the modern philosopher is Square, and the heavy-handed disciplinarian is Thwackum.
This book has lots of twists and turns, both funny and sad. It certainly demonstrates that sin has consequences!
I recommend this to anyone who has a little patience and an eye for wit.
The next novel I’m reading is Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence. Quite the change of pace!
