Reviewing a work of fiction falls pretty far outside the normal parameters of this site, ^[1]While there’s some precedent for literature on a football blog, I’ll be honest about the real reason for today’s post. I publish a post daily, so it feels odd to spend countless … Continue reading but I’ll give it a shot with Donna Tart’s newest book, The Goldfinch. Her novel will be one of the more popular books of the year: it’s 8th on the list of best-selling E-Books and the number two best-seller on Amazon’s fiction hardcopy book list. There are many reviews already out there for you to read, although I’ve quickly learned that reading most book reviews is a miserable experience.  So I’ll write a review that I’d want to read for a book I’m deciding whether I want to read.

A bomb explodes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the museum at the time are 13-year-old Theodore Decker (the main character and narrator), his mother, and a pair of strangers whose presence form the first link in the long chain of events that make up our story. Theo’s mother dies in the terrorist attack, and the first act takes us through Theo’s life as a de facto 13-year-old orphan (his father and grandparents want nothing to do with him).

The title of the book comes from a real piece of art, painted in 1654 by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, and currently on display in the Frick Museum in New York City. In the aftermatch of the museum bombing, Theo takes off with the painting, and the book ostensibly is about Theo’s love for the painting.  Only that’s not really the case, at least not for many large sections of the book. As Julie Myerson noted in her review, we are told that there are two loves of Theo’s life — the painting and a girl — but both largely absent for hundreds of pages.  The painting itself is an afterthought for most of the first 85% of the book, although by the end, I felt that the novel was appropriately titled.

The book is entertaining and a good read, but for whatever reason, I find it much easier to talk about what I didn’t like about the book than what I did.  As someone who rarely reads fiction, it’s probably not fair for me to criticize Tartt for her endless descriptions of well, every person, place, and thing in the book. Probably my biggest issue with most fiction books are the unnecessary and overwhelming number of adjectives, and Tartt is as guilty as any, including many paragraphs (and even pages) of pure description that feel like a waste of time. A book shouldn’t be a Stallone movie, but a little more action (in the form of interaction, dialogue, or inner musings) and less description would have been my first recommendation as editor.

Another thing that jumped out at me is that, with perhaps two exceptions, none of the characters are particularly likeable. And even those two exceptions are essentially caricatures of real people with little depth: their purposes in life are to be the stereotypes they portray and to be there when interaction with Theo is necessary or desirable.

Theo is a sympathetic character early on, obviously, and while he never becomes evil, he also isn’t someone you necessarily root for. He lies, he cheats, he develops an addiction to drugs and alcohol. Protagonists need not be role models, but nearly every character we meet is a deeply flawed individual. Maybe that just makes The Goldfinch a realistic portrayal of humanity, but it makes it harder to describe what it is that I actually like about the book.

In reading many reviews, I was a bit surprised that few commented on the what I perceived to be the dark nature of the book.  I wouldn’t label it dark in the traditional sense, but many of the characters, including Theo, seem to have a special flair for self destructive behavior. Several reviews have compared Tartt’s style to that of Dickens, so allow me to be the first to compare the characters in the book to Al Pacino’s character in Two for the Money (language NSFW).

Theo, his father, the Barbour family, and Boris, among others, all exhibit self-destructive tendencies throughout the book. The drug and alcohol abuse is a central part of it, and there are hints of suicidal thoughts for many of the book’s main characters. Again, this doesn’t make the book bad; it just makes it a bit challenging for me to figure out quite exactly why I find it entertaining.

Putting aside the love for unnecessary adjectives, the book is extremely well-written, and Tartt does a good job keeping the reader’s interest. I read it over a short period and entered that “can’t put it down” stage, as did both of my friends who read the book. It’s clear to me that I would pick up much more on a second read, and then much more still on a third or fourth read. That alone makes me hesitate to be harsh, as I suspect I missed quite a few subtleties on the first read. The ending, in particular, was unsatisfying (and that’s as descriptive as I’ll get), although I don’t begrudge Tartt: I can’t necessarily think of a satisfying way to end the book, either. Despite my inability to articulate exactly what it is I enjoyed about the book, I’ll recommend it if you have any interest in reading fiction (and can avoid being dissuaded by the length).