Not the Booker prize shortlist: a long look at Donna Tartts The Goldfinch

Tartt is a wonderful writer, but her third novel is deeply flawed: cliched, absurd and far, far too long

Sam Jordison reviews the rest of the Not the Booker prize shortlist

Donna Tartt is a wonderful writer. Look at how she arrived in 1992: The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

The Secret History more than lived up to the promise of that opening. It was a glorious combination of intrigue, in-crowd appeal, mystery and wrong-footing cheek. It was intelligent, fresh and a compulsive page-turner. It turned Tartt into a star and sold truckloads of copies, as did her next book, The Little Friend. After only three novels, she is one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time Magazine.

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