Reviews with content warning for Vomit - The Goldfinch

I do not know how anyone called this book “light-hearted.”

I really wanted to love this book, but I HATE epistolary books that expound on how “no one will ever read this” it just breaks that fourth wall thing narrators should have and pisses me off. It seems like such a stupid thing for this amazing writer to do.

The main problem, though, is that for half the book I really thought I was reading a different novel. I kept expecting it to turn into the novel I though I was reading. I don’t think I can explain without giving too much away, but I think I can say this novel is much more cluttered than I wanted. And sort of cheap. At the end there are pages explaining the theme of the novel, like a Hallmark Christmas movie that suddenly comes right out and has the main character speak the title of the movie, twice, to make sure you get it.

Donna Tartt has big idea and small ideas and ideas that are big and small at the same time and make you cry. Her writing can hit you in the gut when she reaches into your heart and tugs that one string you’ve held tight since college when you suddenly saw how perfect and stupid the world actually is. But you turn the page and suddenly there are three other ideas that just tangle the whole mess up and make you want to close the book and not slog your way through it. It’s better in this book than The Little Friend, but it’s still just too much. The exposition at the end just amplified the horror of it all.

The main character is great. I don’t understand why he needed to TWICE explain this thing that antique dealers do when they are trying to grift people and can’t help but wonder if the editor was supposed to pull it once. But he’s perfectly, understandably flawed. I wanted to slap him and hold him close at the same time. There were three secondary characters I could do without, but that just gets to my whole too-cluttered aspect of the book. I loved the mother and can’t figure out why other people don’t. Maybe she reminds me too much of people I love. Other than her, though, the adult female characters were one dimensional or non-existent. They were all trash, and the way abuse is treated as mostly normal is upsetting.

I wanted to give this 5 stars, because there were places it had me crying, but none of this place were past the three-quarter mark and that last quarter just pissed me off.

Content Warnings

ergative's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was certainly an engrosssing read, and we cruised through it very quickly. I do rather wish there had been less drugs and throwing up, though. Boris made every page he was on much more interesting than pages featuring only Theo feeling things and mooning creepily after Pippa--but I don't think it's accurate to say that Boris was maybe the best friend Theo ever had. That is obviously Hobie.

In a way it reminded us of War and Peace: An excellent story, followed by a long tedious chunk of philosophizing. And since Theo is absolutely not someone to learn life lessons from, the philosophizing is of limited value to us the reader, and indeed internally contradictory. For example: if the value of loving beautiful things is that they are immortal and loved by many people--even though the reason each individual loves it might be personal and specific---then what's the problem with selling Hobie's fakes as authentics? Are they not themselves beautiful? Isn't that why Theo wanted to sell them in the first place--because they spoke to him as exquisite pieces of craftsmanship? Indeed, under this philosophy, what's the point of valuing antiques more than any other work of art? If it's not the specific beauty of the piece that specifically speaks to you and thereby determines its value, then the value of antiques is determined by something utterly inconsistent with this love-of-beauty that becomes emergently universal. Like, for example, snobby elitism that values owning something valuable for the sake of showing off its value. I would have enjoyed more story-to-philosophizing in this book. That would have also had the advantage of shaving off a fair few pages.

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tiedyequeen's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book really does seem slow and very long, but the writing was so captivating and the plot was like a fever dream. I had no idea what was going to happen next and I love that. The audiobook was very well done as well.

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