The Goldfinch
By Donna Tartt
Publication Year: 2013
Type: Fiction
Genre: contemporary, mystery
Read on 2018-05-23
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2018 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
Would be a 3-star (I don’t believe in half-stars) but for the fact that I’m an art history major with a penchant for decorative/material culture, so I just gobbled up the luscious ramblings-on about Dutch paintings and American antiques. The bit where Theo and minor character Horst have a conversation on painting was the only part that pulled me out of it - while certainly the rest of it all could’ve been cut down by at least a third, this particular little artsy fartsy was the only one that read to me as truly pretentious. I even enjoyed the prolonged contemplative denouement - not because I found the life lessons Tartt wrings out of her story particular groundbreaking but because of the critically decent and emotionally impactful discussion of the objective value of art/beauty and the common ground between Hobie’s antiques and so-called canonical masterpieces like The Goldfinch.
The length was not too much of a challenge but only because I’m on vacation and was actively on the prowl for something chunky to sink my teeth into. Probably not great for those with a lower tolerance for pretension, contemplative interludes, and general verbosity. This book is great precisely for these things (by god can this woman write) but understandably these things are not for everyone.
I look forward to reading her debut novel, A Secret History, having heard so many rave reviews of it, and hope that baby Donna Tartt will have demonstrated a little more restraint (maybe self-consciousness is the word I’m looking for?) but given us just as many blazing individuals and beautifully haunting moments as she has done in this sprawling epic.
