The Goldfinch in What's the Name of That Book???

Oct 25, 2013 Lisa Vegan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dogs, 1-also-at-librarything, zz-5star, novel, bookclub, favorites, readbooks-female-author-or-illust, reviewed, nyc, fiction

I had 3 ½ weeks to read an almost 800 page book and I was worried, but I did it, with a few days to spare. I’m so grateful to my book club for getting it off my to-read shelf, the fact that we uncharacteristically hadn’t chosen our next book and two members at our last meeting were currently reading this one, so we made it our next book. I shudder to think how it could have languished forever unread. It has had such an impact on me.

The premise appealed to me but I had no idea how much it would ...more

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May 14, 2016 El rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, big-effing-books, wanderlust, peer-pressure, artsy-fartsy

I've been wanting to read this for a long while. Donna Tartt is one of those writers that I really adore, but she puts out one book every 300 years or so. I first read The Secret History I think in my late teens or so. I read The Little Friend in my twenties. And now I read The Goldfinch before the end of my thirties. (I mean, I still had a couple years to go, but still. Work with me here.) I appreciate that Tartt takes her sweet-ass time between books because I feel she wants to write the book I've been wanting to read this for a long while. Donna Tartt is one of those writers that I really adore, but she puts out one book every 300 years or so. I first read The Secret History I think in my late teens or so. I read The Little Friend in my twenties. And now I read The Goldfinch before the end of my thirties. (I mean, I still had a couple years to go, but still. Work with me here.) I appreciate that Tartt takes her sweet-ass time between books because I feel she wants to write the book she wants to write, and not what some publisher wants, or some other gross person who just wants to make money off of her. Maybe I'm completely wrong and she has people breathing down her neck all of the time, but that goes against my fantasy, so I will disregard that possibility.

But I also put off reading The Goldfinch for a long while because while most people I know on Goodreads have rated it very highly, some other readers whose opinions I trust do not feel as positive towards the book. And I got anxious about it. What if I didn't like it too? Would I be turned off from reading Tartt forever and ever? Probably not because I didn't like The Little Friend as much as The Secret History, and yet I still looked forward to reading The Goldfinch. But again - the worry!

I sat down with my 700+ hardcover copy of this book over a weekend and I read about half of it pretty much in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. It's not that the book has no faults, because it does. It is contrived in parts, bloated for many parts. But Tartt excels as writing believable characters - or if not believable, at least interesting. That can be a challenge, especially for such a behemoth as this book. But she sucked me in, she made me care about young Theo Decker, and I continued caring for him throughout the expanse of the story. I cared about the other characters as well, and my heart sort of broke for many of them because holy shit, a lot of bad shit happens to a lot of people in this book. The book is practically saturated with the tears and blood that comes from all of the characters' experiences.

It's not wholly hopeless, though. That's another thing about Tartt. It seems like nothing will really work out for anyone, but it does, though never in the way you would expect it. It does not end with the relationship I think most readers were pulling for throughout, and that's a bummer, but that's also how life fucking works. Other relationships, again, seemed contrived, but whatever. It was so readable, I barely cared that much.

The story lost a little steam for me towards the end. Theo is older, everyone is older, I didn't care so much for a lot of the events. The story doesn't always know what it wants to be, but instead sort of pokes at everything. There's an underlying mystery throughout, just a light thread that isn't always noticeable, and then all of a sudden all of that sort of explodes in our faces. I didn't enjoy that so much, but only because I wanted to focus on other things and found myself frustrated that Tartt wasn't allowing me to read about what I wanted to read, rather than what she wanted to tell me. That's so selfish, yes, but also a testament to Tartt as a writer that I cared enough to want to see the story play out in a very specific way.

It's hard for me to say if others will enjoy this book. I don't love it because it won the Pulitzer or whatever, I'm not one for award-winning novels (though am pleased whenever I actually like a book that won a prestigious award), and the size will turn off some readers. I liked it because of the atmosphere throughout. There is so much atmosphere here. So much.

Whatever, if you don't want to read the book, I'm sure they'll make a movie of it soon enough. ...more

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Aug 04, 2020 Philip rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio, pulitzer, concord-book-clubs

An absolute gem of a book.

Sometimes audio hurts a work, sometimes it enhances it. The audio version of this book was superb. The accents of the characters... I mean, Boris - who has like... an Eastern European/Ukranian/Australian accent? Звичайно! Я це чую! (Zvychayno! YA tse chuyu!) Or Xandra's gravelly, but not off-putting voice? Really well done.

I went in cold, and was expecting something a little bit more... idk... Jodi Piccoult. But it wasn't. Not at all. (And that's not a diss, I'm a big J ...more

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Jan 28, 2014 martha rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle, 5-star-favs, year-2014

Aaaaahhhh, this was so long! Aaahhh, this was so good!

If the world allowed such things, I'd probably give this a 4.5; there were definitely parts I didn't enjoy and parts I found debilitatingly stressful, but I'm rounding up for how completely engrossing it was. (And isn't that almost all anyone really wants in a book? It is for me.)

First, a note of appreciation for the immense range in settings and characters and tone -- so incredibly disparate, maybe moreso than any other book I can think of, Aaaaahhhh, this was so long! Aaahhh, this was so good!

If the world allowed such things, I'd probably give this a 4.5; there were definitely parts I didn't enjoy and parts I found debilitatingly stressful, but I'm rounding up for how completely engrossing it was. (And isn't that almost all anyone really wants in a book? It is for me.)

First, a note of appreciation for the immense range in settings and characters and tone -- so incredibly disparate, maybe moreso than any other book I can think of, yet ultimately this feels as cohesive and real as an actual life. The way it stayed with details, let scenes of even very mundane life expand in real time contributed to that feeling of realism.

This seems like a digression but it's not: one thing I never expected about getting an ereader was how it would transform me into a highlighter/underliner/marginalia-er. I never have been, since I've spent my life in the world of library books, or textbooks I'd have to sell back. And even in cases when I could, it's not like I'd stop reading in the general course of things, to find a pen and make a mark. With the Kindle, though, I can pause and underline any gorgeous turn of phrase or crazy good paragraph and I do now, all. the. time.

This is the kind of book that's made for that. Except it's not the kind of book where style overwhelms plot; no matter what else you can say about it, this book keeps moving forward, is almost compulsively readable in that sense.

And in a way, really -- here's where my pretentious English major side is gonna come out -- it's like when the book talks about how you can see a painting two ways at the same time. As Theo puts it: "It's there in the light-rinsed atmosphere, the brush strokes he permits us to see, up close, for exactly what they are--hand worked flashes of pigment, the very passage of the bristles visible--and then, at a distance, the miracle, or the joke as Horst called it, although really it's both, the slide of transubstantiation where paint is paint and yet also feather and bone."

And that's how this book is put together, too. You can see the brush strokes, the handiwork that goes into the really excellent writing and at the same time appreciate the whole story as something that seems real and inhabitable, without the writing coming between you and it at all.

Also I can't wait to go back and look at what I marked. ...more

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Nov 11, 2013 Melissa Rochelle rated it liked it

Shelves: library, read-2013, coming-of-age

I never thought, I'm going to abandon this book, but I certainly felt like skimming over a lot of it. I loved the beginning of this book. So much that I didn't want it to end. Then we went to Vegas and I started to grow a little tired of this book. Then we were back in New York, all is well, but then we were in Europe.

The characters are interesting, the story is good, the writing is dense. Apparently it's Dickensian, but I've never read Charles Dickens (except for maybe The Christmas Carol), so ...more

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Jul 29, 2013 Jessie rated it it was amazing

This book wrecked me. It's impossible to write coherently about it. I didn't think she could ever top The Secret History, but this is her masterwork. And did anyone else get a weird, Catcher In The Rye vibe? Like a super drugged up, modern Holden Caulfield? Maybe it's just me.
I was filled with both profound sadness and vast joy as I read this book. I'm babbling. Donna Tartt is God, possibly? ...more

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Apr 02, 2014 Marigold rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, nyc, dickensian, five-stars, states-nevada, pulitzer-prize, fiction-2010-2020

Edit: This is the first time I've actually tracked a "re-read" in Goodreads - I don't re-read that much, so usually I just ignore anything I re-read and don't add it. But I wanted to add this because I read this very deliberately as my last book of 2020, and I'm so glad I did. It's the perfect book with which to end this shitty, unbelievable, but important year. I loved this book as much the second time as I did the first.

My definition of a "Good Read" includes good writing, interesting charact Edit: This is the first time I've actually tracked a "re-read" in Goodreads - I don't re-read that much, so usually I just ignore anything I re-read and don't add it. But I wanted to add this because I read this very deliberately as my last book of 2020, and I'm so glad I did. It's the perfect book with which to end this shitty, unbelievable, but important year. I loved this book as much the second time as I did the first.

My definition of a "Good Read" includes good writing, interesting characters, a good story, and a book that takes me on a journey of some kind. The Goldfinch fulfills all those criteria beautifully. It's long. It's somewhat harrowing from time to time. Within the larger picture - which is an exploration of love, grief, what family consists of, friendship, place-based identity, obsession, anxiety, and the redemptive power of art and beauty - the book is an homage to writing and art itself. From its detail to its philosophy, from its Dickensian orphans to its noir-movie sequence in Amsterdam, it reflects pieces of art & brings them back to us in a different form.

I can't say that I loved Theo (the main character) all the time; he's damaged, smart, secretive, introverted and takes way too many substances. If I knew someone like Theo in real life I'd probably avoid him! But as a character in a novel, I cared about him, & I kept rooting for him throughout the book. Is Theo the goldfinch? Like the bird in the painting, he's held captive, in his case by his own life that he can't forget or escape from. But he goes on, a little disheveled & a little brave & a little crazy. In general the characters in The Goldfinch are very true to themselves. Their good and bad qualities make sense within the characterization, so there are no jarring notes where you think, "oh, that person would never have done that." Every character is fully realized & multi-dimensional. You can see them in your head, you can hear their voices, you know what they do & why they do it. You feel like they're real people. I will never forget Boris, Hobie, Theo's father, Xandra, or Mrs. Barbour. Even Andy, Platt & Kitsey, who are side characters, have lives that pop out of the page. Every character speaks their own language. I've seen some criticism of language used in this book, & other reviewers have said that characters don't talk like modern people. While that may be somewhat true, for me it speaks to Tartt's ability to draw the character through their voice and language. Theo does not use the same words as Boris or Hobie; a young & very intelligent young man of modern times does not use the same words as a Russian Australian-raised young man with little schooling, or the same words as an older, somewhat sheltered old-school New York City antique restoration expert.

Things I want to say about The Goldfinch that are not spoilers - OK this one is an extremely, extremely minor spoiler that may make things easier for readers like me - there's a dog, & the dog does not die. (Yeah, I had to read ahead to make sure.)

I've added this to my "Dickensian" shelf, & I see in other reviews that the parallels between The Goldfinch & some of Dickens' works have been noticed before. While the setting & time period are modern, the journey of Theo is reminiscent of Pip in Great Expectations or even David Copperfield. There are also some sly references to Harry Potter throughout!

A final note about another genius thing that Tartt does in The Goldfinch. She creates settings you can smell, taste and feel. New York City and Las Vegas and Amsterdam are like additional characters in the book, & the descriptions of specific places & weather & the "feel" of the city are absolutely perfect.

Having trekked across the world with Theo, I was exhausted after so many pages & so much real pain, but I didn't want it to end. I really almost felt like going back to the beginning & starting over. This is a brilliant achievement - don't miss it. ...more

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