Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

3 reviews

franzis's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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astoryofpages's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It was long, too long. Don't get me wrong, it's a good book but... I think yet I had too high expectations. I loved The Secret History by this author (one of my favourite books) and I was excepting the same mystic atmosphere. Instead, I didn't feel any empathy for the characters. Things kept happening in Theo's life but I was like "well, good luck" and kept reading. And the moments/characters that interested me were completely secondary and quickly put aside (I love you Pippa. No kidding).

I was also quite lost in this "universe". Not being American (and not living in an English-speaking country), I did not understand the many nods to brands, TV channels, the streets of New York, etc. And not knowing much about art either, I was quickly lost when we started to mention the names of painters and their works. So the long descriptions were quite boring, but I also couldn't read diagonally because every detail is important at some point. So if you skip something, you might get lost a few pages down the line. The length of the chapters was also a problem: on chapters of 150 pages, it ran out of steam a bit in the middle, before obviously ending on a cliffhanger at the end.

The story remains very beautiful, the writing very poetic, and it would be a lie to say that Donna Tartt did not surprise me more than once.
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tobeeornottobee's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

i've seen a lot of negative reviews about this book. about how it's boring, hard to get through, uniteresting. i think if your only critique of a book is that it's boring, it's not really a critique. it's a heavy book, it was written in the early 2000's and deals with a lot of trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms. going in i thought this was a book i would have to drag myself through. i didn't find that to be true in the least. its dysfunctional and unreliable, a direct reflection of the narrator. the book takes us through a lifetime spent severely depressed and filled high with anxiety. i think if it was shorter, less wordy, it would have been so much more impersonal. it wouldn't have settled in my chest the same way. (also the characters. obviously, we're seeing it through theo's eyes so everything is tinted with his thoughts and feelings. i think boris and theo's dynamic is really important. i think andy deserved better. i think theo is a repressed gay man. i think these people were real and tangible.) take care with the topics and triggers in this book. but if it is something you think you'll enjoy, don't be deterred by negative reviews. 
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