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saschak 's review for:
The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
This was on my list for many years - and vacation still is the best opportunity to read 800 pages of "modern" american drama.
And tbh I am quite torn about this.
One side: beautiful language, elegant story-telling, interesting personell. A well-crafted coming-of-age, surviving bad parenting, handling with grief book
The other side: too many time-jumps, missing feeling of time and place (how old is everybody now? How much time has passed?). Too often the feeling that sth is not working out or is simply too unrealistic (child-service eg).
But the worst part: the last 200 pages it turns to an action-crime-heist-story - and there is a reason why there are not many good crime-writers. Our hero is doing extremely stupid things, forgets how phones work etc.
And Donna Tartt has obviously never been to Amsterdam (or Europe): nothing here works out, eg our hero looses his passport and therefore can't buy a train-ticket from Amsterdam to Paris... really?
Overall: I enjoyed most part of the first 600 pages, disliked the next 200. And let's not talk about the end which is a contradiction in itself: not really a classic happy-end, not that bad for Theo either, but his last words so unnecessary depressing (life is carastrophe and so on)...
And tbh I am quite torn about this.
One side: beautiful language, elegant story-telling, interesting personell. A well-crafted coming-of-age, surviving bad parenting, handling with grief book
The other side: too many time-jumps, missing feeling of time and place (how old is everybody now? How much time has passed?). Too often the feeling that sth is not working out or is simply too unrealistic (child-service eg).
But the worst part: the last 200 pages it turns to an action-crime-heist-story - and there is a reason why there are not many good crime-writers. Our hero is doing extremely stupid things, forgets how phones work etc.
And Donna Tartt has obviously never been to Amsterdam (or Europe): nothing here works out, eg our hero looses his passport and therefore can't buy a train-ticket from Amsterdam to Paris... really?
Overall: I enjoyed most part of the first 600 pages, disliked the next 200. And let's not talk about the end which is a contradiction in itself: not really a classic happy-end, not that bad for Theo either, but his last words so unnecessary depressing (life is carastrophe and so on)...