The Goldfinch

Yep. I loved the first 1/3 of the book. I found the story interesting, I liked the characters, I wanted to know more... Then chapter 10 happened, and I noticed that it had been deteriorating the whole time, but it had happened so slowly (like everything else with this book) that I hadn't noticed it. And then it crashed.
Chapter 12 is among the most stupid crap I've ever read. The logic and research was on the level with fan fiction. When it's OK for fan fiction quality work, it is not OK for a Pulitzer prize winner.

I mean, it starts with them flying over the Atlantic ocean in about an hour. His best friend becomes a totally different person, just to force our MC to wander the streets of Amsterdam and waste time. He takes his passport with him, just to lose it, so that the author can create drama later on.
He gets wet, just so that he gets sick. (Because people get cold by getting cold. It has nothing to do with things like viruses and so.)
He creates really elaborate plans to get rid of his blood stained shirt, when the most obvious, easiest and untraceable solution would be to just put it in the hotel waste basket. Hotel cleaning crew has seen a lot more upsetting, incredible, weird things in waste baskets than a stained shirt.
His telephone dies two days after it got wet, when he tries to charge it, just so that he won't get his friend's text messages.
He tries to buy a train ticket and they insist on seeing his passport. This doesn't ever happen. They don't care about your ID when you buy a train ticket. They just want your money. And you can be a kid, they'll sell you tickets anywhere you want. Because your passport is going to be checked AT THE BORDER. And there is no border control between Amsterdam and Paris. But, noooo, that would be too easy, and Donna would have needed to cut out this whole part, and she probably loved this specific part.

There's at least 400 pages too many in this book, and a lot of drama just for drama. It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't forward the story, it's just there, because. FU, that's why!
It's like watching a damned Woody Allen movie. (I don't get the fascination of those either. Blasé and neurotic people yap about things no-one cares about, not even they, and there's a lot of sex between “woody” and a young, pretty, sex-crazy fan girl. And everyone speaks the same way. Lots of stuttering and blabbering and impotent rage.)



Really, the last 200 pages I was like “look at that bitch eating those crackers as if she owned the world”. Every little error and fault grew into a bloodstain that just won't wash out. Like, where did all those shoes in his closet come from?

I almost forgave her with the scene with Hobie at the end, but then she made me angry again with the last part of blah blah blah blah... I was moaning out loud when reading the last 100 pages, and almost started crying when I turned a page and saw that there was still more to be read. Like reading the Cyrano de Bergerac death scene. He talks and talks and walks about and falls and dies and wakes up and talks some more and dies and wakes up and talks... and here the MC talks and talks and talks, says the same thing over and over again, differently this time, and then the same way, just to make it sure we get the point, and blah blah blah blah...

GOD! If it hadn't been a library book, I would have ripped it in pieces, jumped on it and burned it!

I would have given it two stars, because I really liked the beginning, the basic story, the characters, but The Goldfinch received tons of accolades and praise from people who really should know better. I call this “Emperor's New Clothes” effect - people don't get it, but it SHOULD be amazing, so they praise it and talk about some mysterious values and stuff, to hide how clueless they are. I really fail to see how anyone could seriously like this book. I know, I know, people like different things, but... Uh.
Anyway, one of my greatest achievements this year is managing to actually read this book.

Hmm. I needed to sit with this a bit before reviewing. What to say?? It is certainly: very long. And yet kind of a page-turner? It didn't quite feel as long as it was. And I do take the point that the long, draggy parts are intentionally evocative of Theo's ennui.

The writing is lovely. The attitude Theo shows towards women is...icky? But realistically icky? But maybe now I'm at a point where I'm just less interested in the exquisite rendering of how a young man objectifies women without it ever really being challenged?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

A child loses his mother in a terrorist attack at an art museum. As he escapes the wreckage he steals a piece of art, and keeps it along with the guilt he has for stealing it for the next 10+ years into adulthood.

I found it to be quite a gripping book. I definitely preferred when he was more of an idealistic child and not the troubled adult he becomes, though.

I decided to listen to this book after seeing the movie trailer. This was one of the most boring, uninteresting books I have every listened to. I actually increased the speed of the playback to 2x just to get through this book, something I have never done before. I would have been better off just DNFing this book instead of struggling to finish.

Это боль и красота в одном флаконе, невероятное соседство мерзотности и утонченности под одной обложкой. Тут нельзя переоценить каждую букву - все несет в себе смысл и краски, и сама по себе печальная история жизни Тео Деккера уже выглядит как тщательно выписанный шедевр, произведение искусства. Мальчишка стал случайной жертвой теракта в нью-йоркском музее, в котором погибла его горячо любимая мама и который стал отправной точкой для всего его радостей и горестей. Собственно, все повествование строится на противоречиях и двойственности, нет ни одного эпизода, который был бы сам по себе. У всего и у всех в этой книге есть противовес, - и у добродетельного Хоби, и у маргинального отца Тео; неоспоримо прекрасны только ангелы и “Щегол”.
Когда я только читала аннотации к книге и первые рецензии, я не могла найти ничего конкретного, а затравка про взрыв в музее никак не отражала всей мощи тех событий, что описываются здесь. Сейчас, по прочтении, эта туманность стала понятной и обоснованной - нельзя объяснить то, что создано для того, чтобы чувствовать.
Эта книга - чистый наркотик, кайф без отложенного действия. Ее много и мало одновременно, и всех героев тут недостаточно, и всех событий, и искусства, которым пронизана каждая страница.

A story about the lovers, protectors and thieves of fine art. It's the story of one boy growing up amidst New York high society, a gambling father in Las Vegas, all the drugs a teenager can get his hands on, a love for antique furniture, art world crimes .. all the while dealing with the loss of his mother and the tragedy that brings a famous painting into his possession.

Young Boris - what a character!

I ran really hot and cold on this book. It reads very much like a familiar and kind of insufferable subgenre of literary fiction where white men pine for some timeless golden youth in Manhattan, and I didn't like that. I also didn't like the intro, which immediately flashes back in a disorienting way that indicated to me that we'd flash forward again... but we never did. The flashback was the book, leading back to the present. But by the end, I had been won over. It was pretty interesting and I wanted to know what happened. Which is why the ending, which doesn't tell you what happens, and ends so abruptly I thought something was wrong with my copy, left me cold all over again. I'm averaging this out as a 3. I don't regret reading it; I'm glad I did. But man.Update: something was actually wrong with my copy of the audiobook! There's a whole chapter (1/12 of the book!) remaining. So I'll update this once I'm done.

I thought the essence was brilliant andsome of it was expertly conducted. I qas hookeddrom the beginning, which reminded me of Albert Camus talking about the mother's death. At times, I'd doubt Theo's attitudes, but most of the time I was too engrossed with the great descriptions and other characters' excellent portraits to care. However, to me, rhythm was uneven, with some passages dragging too long, especially towards the last quarter of the book - ans even though I did not see that end coming, I thought it could have been deeper exploited in some of its angles.
All in all, it was worth reading, but I'm not sure it's rhe most amazing fiction woeth prizes and so on.

Ok so. I do think this is her best book (so far!!), and that she has brought the best aspects from both The Secret History and The Little Friend here (The Little Friend is still my favourite buttt I can acknowledge that it is perhaps, technically, less ‘good'.....whatever that means.....) This book was a slow but wonderful read (as all of her books have been for me), beautifully written, absolutely sprawling, with probably the most developed and intricate characterisation in any of her books (The Little Friend though......but I concede I can have objective-ish viewpoints! Though I will stand by the fact the The Little Friend has the best main character (although she does not first person narrate the story) as I think that both Richard and Theo are most interesting in their relationships with others, particularly Theo because the characters in The Goldfinch are just so good!!!! Not that I dislike Richard and Theo: I'm very fond of them. Just much, much fond(er)/curious of, like, most other people in their books.) Having read them chronologically, it is amazing to see the distinct threads that cross over all of her stories while each still has such a lovely individual character........Donna Tartt, you insidious web-weaver, you've done it again!

There were moments, as I was reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, when I would catch myself reading out loud, oblivious to where I was and who was around me. Nobody complained, but I am sure that my sanity was questioned by passers-by, as I sat on park benches and read aloud, to nobody but myself, relishing the lyrical prose of Ms. Tartt's Pulitzer-winning novel.

That The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer for fiction is no surprise, and wholly well-deserved. There is a poetry to Ms. Tartt's writing that is unusual for a book of this length; every sentence is considered, every paragraph crafted with a nod to the way the words would feel in the mouth of the reader, how the pauses would sit, heavy or light, in the brain. This is truly a novel to be read out loud, to be relished on the tongue, to echo through the ears. The descriptions of every location, every person, every piece of clothing, every meal are vivid, leaving more than just images in your mind, but realistic tableaus of settings and scenarios you feel you may have once lived.

The story is captivating and moves at a good pace, never languishing as is often normal in an almost-800-page book, but the narrative knows its place: it is not the star of the novel, for the spotlight belongs on the language, on the poetic rhythm of the words as they dance across the page and into the readers mind.

About two-thirds of my way into the book, I gave up on attempting normalcy and dove fully into my loud reading of The Goldfinch. I read each paragraph like a poem, each piece of dialogue as if it was being performed on stage; the prose lent itself to such florid and evocative reading. I needed no audience: the sound of Ms. Tartt's writing in my ears was applause enough. I can't wait to read it, all 800 pages of it, again.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

How do you find meaning? If you can create meaning, subjectively imbue an object or a person with it, can the ideas of objective value, genuine article, coincidence, stand up against elaborate, satisfying, even mythic, illusions, the idea of a fated course? 
Especially when experience would otherwise lend a pessimistic, nigh nihilistic reading of life without actively seeking out the idea of ‘something more', a purpose, a reason, a relationship, a stimulant. 
Beautiful writing can make drawn out moments a lovely place to dwell, but a string of shitty circumstances, even described poetically can render the writing's tendency to dwell a difficult read. Thus, it's exceptionally frustrating to realize in retrospect that the amount of suffering, both hazily and sharply-related by the main character, works to make the ending, if not tidy, then cathartic, impactful. 
It's hard to rail against the protagonist's dimmer view of life, both given his experiences, and because it is tempered by a love of beauty, an inexhaustible appetite for tiny moments of joy to be found too few and far between.
It's hard to rail against the protagonist's choices, as the reader is so intimately familiar with his thoughts, the mixture of a desperate scramble for survival, comfort, contentment, connection, acceptance and the coldly spoiling sporadic luxury and privilege. 
Theo is still working things out when we leave him, and I think that state is true to the book's tone.
Not a favourite, but I fully recognize that's because I'm impatient and a sucker for happier reads. 
Felt weird seeing so many thugs described first by their nationalities/ethnicities and then their brutish/unattractive physical qualities, I guess technically each was an individual and there was a diverse array, but it feels like a slippery slope to racial stereotypes given the order of presentation. 
⚠️Drug addiction, alcohol abuse, PTSD, mental health concerns, homophobia, childhood assault/bullying