I’m at a bit of a loss as to what my true feelings are on The Goldfinch… at first I had a hard time getting into it (and I thought, “how many pages are there in this brick of a novel?”), but then the majority of the rest flew by and I was captivated as to where it would go next, with only a few patches here and there where my interest wavered, only to then stall out within the last couple of sections and […]
We are trapped in our lives like birds on a chain
The Goldfinch (2013) by Donna Tartt is one I’d heard a lot of but wasn’t sure I wanted to read. It won the Pulitzer and was on a bunch of lists, but it was long and felt like a big commitment. I also didn’t have a very good idea of what it was about. But when it showed up on two of my book lists and my book club decided to read it, I figured it was inevitable. I found The Goldfinch to be well-written with realistic, interesting characters and […]
Fly, you fools!
Theo Decker is a thirteen-year old boy who lives in New York with his mother. He adores her and she adores him, but he gets very nervous when she, one day, has to stay home from work in order to meet with his school – for what reason, he doesn’t know. He can only suspect why he’s in trouble. Before they head to school, they go to the museum for a quick visit, because Theo’s mother loves art. That’s when Theo’s life changes forever. […]
Glorious depravity
Richard is a Californian, kind of poor kid that goes off to college on the East Coast. He is also kind of lost: he’s already changed his major twice, and now he chooses to study only Greek (and a little French) knowing fully well that it won’t lead to any job opportunities later on. There is an air of mystery surrounding the Greek professor and his select few students. Richard is in awe of them. Their world, partly because they come from rich families, is […]
Or Whatever
I normally paint myself as someone who will trade a decent plot for beautiful prose, but perhaps I have found my limit for that as being somewhere around 300 pages. I don’t think I’m treading new ground to say I thought The Goldfinch would never end. There is such a thing as too much perfection. Tartt has a magic about her writing – without any obvious brush strokes, you are in a scene – you can see and smell and feel everything. She is a […]
Arrested Development, No Bluths. No, strike that, I refuse to be flippant about this gorgeous novel.
When I read Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” over a decade ago, it stuck with me for quite some time. I think “The Goldfinch” is going to haunt me even longer. I don’t know how she does it, but Tartt’s writing style is, for me at least, the literary version of an earworm that has no burn factor. I could not stop thinking about this book every time I put it down. I kept bringing it up with people at work. My dreams were screwed up. […]