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A review by lbarsk
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
5.0
Right off the bat, I want to say that it did not take me two months to read this book. I actually read it in two periods: I started it and got to page 470 within about three days, and then HAD TO PUT IT DOWN BECAUSE IT STRESSED ME OUT. So then I picked it back up on October 6 and finished it October 7. I'm telling you this not to discuss how quickly or slowly I read books, but rather to say that IT IS DAMN COMPELLING. I read it in effectively a week, with a huuuuuge break in the middle of that week, because WOW JUST WOW A GREAT BOOK.
Coming into The Goldfinch, I had read The Secret History but not Tartt's second book, so I knew a little of what I was getting into. Tartt's prose is dense and sometimes confusing but never inaccessible; she likes her narrators to be both relatable and slightly unreliable and usually pretty boozed or drugged up. Reading Tartt is like having an extremely detailed dream that's sometimes a little hard to follow but it's always clear what's happening. I had to go back through a couple paragraphs and re-read them just because some of the sentences are so convoluted, but here's the thing: this style of writing makes TOTAL SENSE given that both Goldfinch and Secret History are told from a first-person perspective. That's how people's thoughts work! So the actual writing of the book is AWESOME.
In terms of character development, Tartt has knocked it out of the park in the same way she did with Secret History. Actually, scratch that, she did it better here than she did in Secret History, probably because this is book number three for her and she knows what's up. Theo, our main character, is so very alive and so very HUMAN, making all kinds of mistakes and bad decisions and then strongly regretting them. And it's not just Theo--every single character in this book feels real. All of them. Even the side ones who are only mentioned in passing still somehow have a sense of aliveness, which is impressive. It's the same with the settings/scenery: you think that you're in the houses that Theo inhabits, you think you're walking around New York City. I am so thankful when an author (regardless of genre: this can certainly be done well in sci-fi/fantasy) is able to immerse his or her readers into the world that has been created.
And plot: DANG. WOW. I couldn't put this book down, until I felt so strongly for Theo and was so troubled by what he was doing that I actually had to put it down because it was stressing me the hell out. Tartt is a gifted storyteller who knows how to weave many plot threads together and keep her readers guessing; I had NO IDEA how everything was going to end and I was SHOCKED and also really pleased. All in all, this was just a really really worthwhile read.
The only thing that got to me was that Tartt has this pattern of trying to make grand statements about the entire universe, and so the last chapter of the book (one big grand statement) was a little bit of a whimper to the bang that was the rest of the book. I know that making these proclamations is sort of the whole point of literature, but it just felt heavy-handed here at the end of a book that was SO NOT heavy handed or preachy. I'm still going to give it five stars, despite the wonky ending and the fact that it did stress me out and I had to put it down for so long. It's the mark of good writing that the book had such an effect, though, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT EVERYONE GO READ THE GOLDFINCH.
Coming into The Goldfinch, I had read The Secret History but not Tartt's second book, so I knew a little of what I was getting into. Tartt's prose is dense and sometimes confusing but never inaccessible; she likes her narrators to be both relatable and slightly unreliable and usually pretty boozed or drugged up. Reading Tartt is like having an extremely detailed dream that's sometimes a little hard to follow but it's always clear what's happening. I had to go back through a couple paragraphs and re-read them just because some of the sentences are so convoluted, but here's the thing: this style of writing makes TOTAL SENSE given that both Goldfinch and Secret History are told from a first-person perspective. That's how people's thoughts work! So the actual writing of the book is AWESOME.
In terms of character development, Tartt has knocked it out of the park in the same way she did with Secret History. Actually, scratch that, she did it better here than she did in Secret History, probably because this is book number three for her and she knows what's up. Theo, our main character, is so very alive and so very HUMAN, making all kinds of mistakes and bad decisions and then strongly regretting them. And it's not just Theo--every single character in this book feels real. All of them. Even the side ones who are only mentioned in passing still somehow have a sense of aliveness, which is impressive. It's the same with the settings/scenery: you think that you're in the houses that Theo inhabits, you think you're walking around New York City. I am so thankful when an author (regardless of genre: this can certainly be done well in sci-fi/fantasy) is able to immerse his or her readers into the world that has been created.
And plot: DANG. WOW. I couldn't put this book down, until I felt so strongly for Theo and was so troubled by what he was doing that I actually had to put it down because it was stressing me the hell out. Tartt is a gifted storyteller who knows how to weave many plot threads together and keep her readers guessing; I had NO IDEA how everything was going to end and I was SHOCKED and also really pleased. All in all, this was just a really really worthwhile read.
The only thing that got to me was that Tartt has this pattern of trying to make grand statements about the entire universe, and so the last chapter of the book (one big grand statement) was a little bit of a whimper to the bang that was the rest of the book. I know that making these proclamations is sort of the whole point of literature, but it just felt heavy-handed here at the end of a book that was SO NOT heavy handed or preachy. I'm still going to give it five stars, despite the wonky ending and the fact that it did stress me out and I had to put it down for so long. It's the mark of good writing that the book had such an effect, though, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT EVERYONE GO READ THE GOLDFINCH.