I have not updated this blog for the past week but you have to forgive me: I was reading The Goldfinch, the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Reading this book feels like a good beating. You try to progress and to do so you fight with the convoluted style, the amount of pages full of digressions about philosophy, history, art, moral, politics, sociology. Exhausted, you are determined to finish it, but it is a big struggle. Each page is like a hit on your head, trying to make you quit.
Let me try to be fair: there are good parts in this book. Donna Tartt is really good at capturing moments, snapping emotions. After all, she describes the early life of Theo, kid, teenager, adult, who struggle with a lot of bad things happening to him. The first one is his mother's death that occurs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The second is to be sent to live with his father and his girlfriend in Las Vegas. The third one... Well let's say that Theo swims in a big, fat unlucky stream. While I liked the character and the plot main elements, I still fail to see why the writer took 771 pages to go through all of this. The Goldfinch would have been a masterpiece if it was half the length. The extra 350 pages is what make you love or should I say hate (?) this book. The tiny little details could make the book shines; in my opinion, they killed it. I like philosophy, history, art, moral, politics, sociology. But I am from the school of Boileau: Ce qui se conçoit bien s'énonce clairement i.e. if you bring a lot of facts and theories to spark an intellectual debate then do it in a clear and structured way to make it understandable by everyone.
I can't regret to have spent so much time reading The Goldfinch. After all, it was worth a try. And I am more than willing to read Donna Tartt's other novels if they are of reasonable length. But, 771 pages is too much for a non-fantasy, non-science fiction book.
Author: Donna Tartt
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Let me try to be fair: there are good parts in this book. Donna Tartt is really good at capturing moments, snapping emotions. After all, she describes the early life of Theo, kid, teenager, adult, who struggle with a lot of bad things happening to him. The first one is his mother's death that occurs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The second is to be sent to live with his father and his girlfriend in Las Vegas. The third one... Well let's say that Theo swims in a big, fat unlucky stream. While I liked the character and the plot main elements, I still fail to see why the writer took 771 pages to go through all of this. The Goldfinch would have been a masterpiece if it was half the length. The extra 350 pages is what make you love or should I say hate (?) this book. The tiny little details could make the book shines; in my opinion, they killed it. I like philosophy, history, art, moral, politics, sociology. But I am from the school of Boileau: Ce qui se conçoit bien s'énonce clairement i.e. if you bring a lot of facts and theories to spark an intellectual debate then do it in a clear and structured way to make it understandable by everyone.
I can't regret to have spent so much time reading The Goldfinch. After all, it was worth a try. And I am more than willing to read Donna Tartt's other novels if they are of reasonable length. But, 771 pages is too much for a non-fantasy, non-science fiction book.
Author: Donna Tartt
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company