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A review by henrymarlene
Becky by Sarah May
3.0
Oh Becky, how your ego was your downfall! I'm on the fence with this book. This book reminded me so much of the Rebecca Brooks phone hacking scandal case in the UK several years ago. I reflected and pondered on how empathy, morality and the quest for facts (not truth) seem to be pushed aside in the media world. We meet Becky, or Rebecca Sharp, who is an orphan with a drive to be successful as a journalist. She is ambitious, looks out for herself, and will climb any ladder (personally or professionally) to be at the top. Yet even at the top and having what she wanted, I don’t think she was ever really happy. Becky could play the game, but she certainly didn’t know how to be happy. And how she treated her so-called friends and family, it was enough to almost cast the book across the room at times. Amelia, Rawdon, George, Lizzie, George and Paul all suffer at the hands of Becky’s duplicitous nature.
The book is a bleak rendition of the 1990s through the eyes of Becky, who seemed to life in a life that was not really her own. She created stories to suit her origins, and use this same power to weave webs of deceit in order to get what she wanted. Even in the denouement, I felt that Becky had still not made peace with per past or present, and that was a sad testament to her so-called life. The backstory of her mother was tragic, and the consequences and corollary for Becky were equally so, but used to her advantage. Becky used the connections of her friends to her advantage to distance herself from being a painfully poor daughter of a cleaner at a school she used in her pathway to glory. Becky is egocentric and delusional, similar to how I would describe some of the media outlets that exist today – all about themselves, built on false beliefs, devoid of fact and evidence and stories, arrogant and callous.
Thanks to PanMacmillan Australia for gifting me a copy of this book.
The book is a bleak rendition of the 1990s through the eyes of Becky, who seemed to life in a life that was not really her own. She created stories to suit her origins, and use this same power to weave webs of deceit in order to get what she wanted. Even in the denouement, I felt that Becky had still not made peace with per past or present, and that was a sad testament to her so-called life. The backstory of her mother was tragic, and the consequences and corollary for Becky were equally so, but used to her advantage. Becky used the connections of her friends to her advantage to distance herself from being a painfully poor daughter of a cleaner at a school she used in her pathway to glory. Becky is egocentric and delusional, similar to how I would describe some of the media outlets that exist today – all about themselves, built on false beliefs, devoid of fact and evidence and stories, arrogant and callous.
Thanks to PanMacmillan Australia for gifting me a copy of this book.