Reviews

O Pintassilgo by Donna Tartt

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namastelala's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Ratin lg was not because the book wasn’t well written. I read for enjoyment and this book didn’t bring me joy so that’s why I related a 3

ri_yeah_ya's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

ahalsnad's review against another edition

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5.0

It was a long and a bit slow read, but the detailed descriptions of everything in the book provide a very picturable play of events. I enjoyed the complexity of every character and could sympathize with their flaws even as they made poor decisions. Of course, the philosophical take at the end of the book was a treat.

I did not appreciate the part where Theo's father takes him to Vegas; I kept wondering why he appeared in Theo's perfectly steady life when he could not take care of a vulnerable teenager with trauma. I could not decide if it was out of love or greediness. That phase of the book was poor parenting and set the tragic tone for the future.
The friendship between Theo and Boris is interesting, albeit destructive in several ways. Boris was there for Theo when he needed someone.

What I enjoyed was this wasn't a book that wallows in self-pity. It was about moving forward the best way possible, fixing things when possible, even though one can never travel back in time.
As Boris philosophizes to Theo,

"The world is much stranger than we know or can say. And I know how you think, or how you like to think, but maybe this is one instance where you can’t boil down to pure ‘good’ or pure ‘bad’ like you always want to do —? Like, your two different piles? Bad over here, good over here? Maybe not quite so simple."

"What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?"

That said, I did not enjoy a couple of things:
- The conversations among the teenage characters, where the statements end with '?' were annoying. Probably it is so to provide authenticity to the conversation, but it takes time to adjust to it.
- The descriptions were way too long sometimes; it was tempting to skip over.

All in all, I loved reading it.