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A review by nichecase
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
5.0
Read this in greedy 100+ page chunks whenever I could.
You canыЂыt throw a stone without hitting a review calling The Goldfinch Dickensian but to me it seems like something else entirely: Ripley by way of the Dickensesque. That gnawing guilt and the increasing machinations to dig himself out of a hole, while only digging himself in deeper (and the sexual ambiguity) (and all the boats!) on one hand; on the other, the plotыЂыs fantastic coincidences, the archetypal figures that populate its pages appealing to the same part of the mind that was the sentimental novelыЂыs great insight. (ThereыЂыs something else, too, something maybe uniquely Tarttian: a vicious irony that delights in its own twists and turns.) It even echoes RipleyыЂыs Venice with another canal-ridden European city break, Amsterdam - a drug-soaked metropolis that teeters uneasily between extremes of wealth and class in TarttыЂыs account.
It would be so much fun to read this with Berlant's articulation of the way sentimentality operates: The ground of mass normative fantasy is wobbly, a scene of bargaining for survival and jockeying for supremacy: but the cohabitation of critique, conventionality, and the commodity produces more movement within a space than toward being or wanting to be beyond it. Cohabitation characterises this book in so many ways - Theo's various precarious living situations.
You canыЂыt throw a stone without hitting a review calling The Goldfinch Dickensian but to me it seems like something else entirely: Ripley by way of the Dickensesque. That gnawing guilt and the increasing machinations to dig himself out of a hole, while only digging himself in deeper (and the sexual ambiguity) (and all the boats!) on one hand; on the other, the plotыЂыs fantastic coincidences, the archetypal figures that populate its pages appealing to the same part of the mind that was the sentimental novelыЂыs great insight. (ThereыЂыs something else, too, something maybe uniquely Tarttian: a vicious irony that delights in its own twists and turns.) It even echoes RipleyыЂыs Venice with another canal-ridden European city break, Amsterdam - a drug-soaked metropolis that teeters uneasily between extremes of wealth and class in TarttыЂыs account.
It would be so much fun to read this with Berlant's articulation of the way sentimentality operates: The ground of mass normative fantasy is wobbly, a scene of bargaining for survival and jockeying for supremacy: but the cohabitation of critique, conventionality, and the commodity produces more movement within a space than toward being or wanting to be beyond it. Cohabitation characterises this book in so many ways - Theo's various precarious living situations.