Book Review: "The Newcomes," by William Makepeace Thackeray

I love the tone of Thackeray's writing. He has a touch of humor, his sweeping statements of humanity tend to ring true 160 years later, and I like how he addresses his reader every once in awhile.
Having read "Vanity Fair" a few years ago now, I decided it was time to read something else by him, so "The Newcomes" it was. It follows a family through all its twists and turns and loves and hates and bads and goods. I grew particularly fond of the Colonel, Clive's father. A good man.
The thing I most loved about the book, though, did not pertain to the family. The book is narrated by a friend of Clive, Arthur Pendennis. About halfway through the book, Arthur mentions that he had recently gotten married. From that time on I cared more about Mr. Pendennis and his sweet wife Laura than about the Newcomes. She, though she did not have a big part in the book, swiftly became one of my favorite literary characters, no doubt because of how her husband lovingly presented her. Never dwelling long on his own family, there were frequent little references to her as being such a good woman, how he would do anything for her, how while society might call Ethel Newcome the most beautiful of women, there was one whom he preferred. There were things like her response when he was teasingly berating her for entertaining the Colonel when her husband was not at home: "'Oh, Pen,' says my wife, closing my mouth in a way which I do not choose further to particularise..." :) He talks about her faith and her uprightness and kindness. After hearing about a neighbor on the brink of a moral failure: "She was silent too for a while. I could see she was engaged where pious women ever will betake themselves in moments of doubts, of grief, of pain, of separation, of joy even, or whatsoever other trial. They have but to will, and as it were an invisible temple rises round them; their hearts can kneel down there; and they have an audience of the great, the merciful, untiring Counsellor and Consoler. She would not have been frightened at Death near at hand. I have known her to tend the poor round about us, or to bear pain - not her own merely, but even her children's and mine, with a surprising outward constancy and calm. But the idea of this crime being enacted close at hand, and no help for it - quite overcame her. I believe she lay awake all that night; and rose quite haggard and pale after the bitter thoughts which had deprived her of rest. She embraced her own child with extraordinary tenderness that morning, and even wept over it...Would you ask what the husband's feelings were as he looked at that sweet love, that sublime tenderness, that pure Saint blessing his life. Of all the gifts of Heaven to us below that felicity is the sum and the chief. I tremble as I hold it lest I should lose it, and be left alone in the blank world without it." He's so sweet about her.
Mr. Thackeray did write a book called "Pendennis," about this chronicler of the Newcomes, but I can't decide whether or not I want to read it. He might not have written their story the way I would've wanted it written. We'll see if I do. I like "The Newcomes" and "Vanity Fair," so I don't know if I'll be able to resist, but I wouldn't want him, you know, the actual author, to write about the Pendennises wrongly.