5/5
I have never written a book review before. This may be strange for a literature student, but as often as I have felt like it would be a good hobby to take up, nothing has yet compelled me to actually write a traditional review of a novel. That is, until The Goldfinch. Donna Tartt’s tour de force has made such an impression on me that I decided it would be morally wrong to not try to share it in some longer lasting form than one of my ineloquent, mid-reading tweets that went along the lines of, “Oh my god, this book is f***ing awesome. #TheGoldfinch #Tarttisagod #ohmygod”.
I discovered Donna Tartt through my mother’s book club, which had planned to read The Goldfinch, but, upon realising that it was only available in hardback, decided that it was too expensive and opted for Tartt’s first and highly acclaimed novel, The Secret History, instead. By the time that news got around to my mom, I had ordered The Goldfinch for her from Amazon and it was displaying itself prominently on our living room side-table, having already arrived. (Thanks, Prime shipping.) My mother is an impressively fast reader (a trait that I did not inherit in the slightest), so she quickly ploughed through The Secret History and started on The Goldfinch and was insisting that I try one of them because she couldn’t put them down and wanted to discuss them with me. I read the former of the two first and it also is a striking novel that deserves its own review in the future. Right now I will focus on the latter.
To begin, The Goldfinch follows the life, from adolescence through adulthood, of Theo Decker, beginning with his traumatic experience of a terrorist bombing of a New York museum, in which his mother dies and he acquires the Carel Fabritius painting of a chained goldfinch, which in the hopes of protecting he ends up stealing and carrying with him for most of the novel. Theo develops an obsession with the painting that evolves into a mixture of passion and shame, evoking a sense of Dorian Gray, as he tries to protect and hide it from the chaos that surrounds him. The plot covers a broad range of subjects, including abusive parenthood, descent into drug use and the criminal underworld, New York social elitism, art history, and, oddly enough, antique dealing. Tartt weaves conspiracy, mystery, romance, and action into her story without ever falling into the dangerous territory of genre fiction. By the end of the 700+ pages, you will know the myriad of characters inside and out, having been sucked into their whirlwind lives.
This is a beautifully crafted book - physically. The book, as a tangible object, tries to convey the experience of discovering Fabritius’ painting covertly. The cover artwork shows a bird peeking through a rip in its paper wrapping. The title and author’s name are printed in a handwritten, pencil-style font on the wrapping. Within the first few pages, you will find a copy of the painting, a small print that is attached along its top edge, as though it were glued inside the pages for only your viewing. Throughout your reading experience, you can refer back to the painting as the narrator rhapsodises about it.
The protagonist, Theo, is the narrator. There is a sense of Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway about him, but he offers a more intimate familiarity and openness. If you do not connect with Theo, you will likely not enjoy the novel. You are in it with him, from beginning to end, pulled into his secrets, his highs, and, most crucially, his grief. I read an interview in which Donna Tartt said that her goal is to create an “immersive experience – the kind of book that you can absolutely lose yourself in”1. The Goldfinch definitely provided that for me. It left me reeling. I think I am still, in fact, reeling. Every time that I am reminded of one of the otherwordly characters throughout the day, a strange sense of familiarity, comfort, and secret knowing floods my mind in the way that truly fantastic fiction does.
There have been some mixed reviews of the novel, going along the lines of ‘love or hate’, though it is widely praised, and is currently short-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Reading The Goldfinch from an academic standpoint, I found that it was perfectly constructed, offering such depth of narrative voice, brimming with motifs and subtleties, and presenting such a robust plot. Any inconsistencies of character that I thought I spotted along the way were all accounted for by the end of the narrative. I have only just started reading Tartt’s other book, The Little Friend, but comparing The Goldfinch with The Secret History, it feels that both novels interact with each other, engaging with shared themes and issues, and existing in similar ‘universes’ of characters and setting. I think that The Goldfinch more fully achieved what The Secret History began twenty years previously.
It always cheers me to find a piece of contemporary fiction that I can undoubtedly class as beautiful literary writing, especially one that engages with current social and cultural issues while still maintaining its role of storytelling, rather than preaching or lecturing. If you are looking for a novel that you can sink your teeth into, that pulls you into an exploration of the human psyche, and from which you can come away having learned something, then The Goldfinch should be at the top of your reading list.
On queer politics, literature, ideology, academia, and living in different countries.
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