The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This short book review only mentions the things I found striking. The book is long and has many other characters whom I omitted for brevity. The Goldfinch won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Spoilers for The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt follow. Warning: Suicide is mentioned in the book.
The Goldfinch fluctuates between being one of the best books I’ve ever listened to and one of the worst books in terms of the soap opera like quality of the plot. The book waddles in sentimentality. This could be a plus or a minus. Sometimes it’s too much to the point of cringe.
The book is not about drugs. I decided to listen to this book because I had a chance to listen to it for free on Libby and because someone online suggested it as it was a book about drugs. However it actually wasn’t a book about drugs and addiction in the way that The Shards was which I briefly reviewed. Although the main character Theo does indulge in a lot of drugs they never overtake his life, and he never really develops an addiction. No one believes he’s on drugs because he just frequently claims he has a cold the flu to concealing his drug use. The drugs were understandable consider his level of trauma.
When Theo was 13 years old he visited a museum with his mother and there was a terrorist bomb. He was not injured and managed to walk away from it stealing a small painting of a Goldfinch because of the old man who was with the girl who caught his attention whom he wanted to speak to or maybe impress, asks him to take with him. The first thing he should have thought about was is his mother, but he never thinks about her safety. He only talks to and relates to the old man who is dying. When the man finally dies Theo says something like, “He’s just resting”, showing himself to be completely clueless. Then he goes home thinking he’s going to meet his mother at home because that’s the rendezvous point but he knows very well that she wouldn’t go home without him. The entire time one feels nervous wondering what happened to the mother and the girl and why this never even crosses Theo’s mind until he leaves the museum. I thought maybe the reason the character was acting so weird is he received a concussion when the museum blew up. Theo is a wreck of a person always complaining of terrible headaches but never going to a doctor checking them out and no explanation is never given for his unusual behavior. The mother does turn out to have died, but the girl survived. How he walked away from the wreckage and left his mother, without thinking of the girl or his mother or even looking for them is absurd. I began to think unreliable narrator was at play.
In spite of having a lengthy conversation with the dying old man who apparently appears to believe that he’s somebody else he never even looks for the girl, named Pippa, to see if she was all right. Early on in the book foreshadowing indicated a romance between Pippa and Theo. However I couldn’t be more wrong, that because that never happens. They never get together in the entire book. They never even go out on a date. It wasn’t what I expected from a typical soap opera plot book which is the kind of book that I would never read. There are two interest similarities to the book ADA Or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov. The character sees a girl briefly, but loves her forever in spite of not seeing her again. The main character tries to write his suicides notes on Hotel Stationery.
The book had great descriptive passages. I enjoyed what the character was thinking about when he was making plans and plotting. There’s long boring parts in the book about an old man who’s an antique dealer named Hobie. Later on Theo moves to Las Vegas to live with his estranged father and he meets a boy called Boris. I didn’t find Boris to be interesting character, but they could have actually renamed this book A Visit from the Goon Squad instead because this book actually does have some Goons in it. Boris (Goon like) is actually the real love interest for Theo and not the girl. The girl is just there to be a red herring so we can believe that it’s not a gay love story, but nonetheless it is. It’s not exactly a gay love story because there’s no love or sexual stuff really going on in the book but they have a friendship in which they’re willing to sacrifice everything for each other even their own lives. Yes I know, terrible soap opera stuff that I ought to be above even liking. This is why I don’t read very much fiction.
Approximately 50% of the material was interesting but the other 50% was either repetitive or boring when the plot seemed to be going absolutely nowhere for chapters and chapters then suddenly large amounts of time would pass and then the book would get to a place where it would again be stuck in inertia. Overall I would say it’s a good book worth looking at with reservations. Maybe Donna Tartt could write a sequel because the book ends without a definitive conclusion? There was a film adaption which can be viewed free with Amazon Prime. The painting of The Gold Finch is real and the information on it can be viewed on Wikipedia.
Watching the film convinced me that the character of Hobie is the problem with both the novel and the book. The Hobie character should be the way that Theo find and connects with the girl Pippa, but instead the novel becomes about how he used the art dealer to commit art fraud crimes which he justifies as these people are too rich to care that they have been cheated. Therefore the character is no longer moral virtuous and perhaps does not even deserve the love of the girl he is seeking. Rather having Theo meeting with the girl and allowing their relationship to develop the girl moves to Texas. Leaving Theo and Hobie alone living together for many years and large portions of novel while time runs out for him to have a chance to with the girl love interest.
Macy Makes Magic 