What I find most rewarding about reading books (good books, anyway) is the sensation of leaving your body for a few hours and astral projecting into someone else’s life, someone else’s world. Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Goldfinch, achieves just this in seven hundred and seventy one pages. It is a lengthy story to tell and, while she may miss the mark (difficult not to with such a page count), Tartt’s world of stolen art, New York City, friendship, and loss drives itself into the brain and lodges itself there, quite stubbornly, for long time afterward.
The Goldfinch takes place predominantly in modern New York City with a story-line that spans almost a decade. At the centre revolves Theo, a thirteen year old New Yorker, who loses his mother in a bombing and is sent to live with a wealthy socialite family. Within his narrative, Theo gains possession of a small painting, The Goldfinch painted by Fabritius, which follows him through his adult life when he becomes an antiques dealer who, alienated and haunted, moves between the upper-class world of New York and the underground world of art. It is an ambitious scope that requires the reader to invest early on in Theo’s journey. Thankfully, Tartt is a skilled story-teller who keeps readers engrossed.
The first thing to mention, above all else, is that Tartt is a master world-builder. She has the most frightening ability of anchoring the reader in place, both emotionally and mentally. Her descriptions, which are plentiful, are loaded with poetry and vitality. It is difficult not to become absorbed in Theo’s thoughts when tragedy plays out inevitably before him. But the anticipation has gone on too long—on with the good stuff!
It’s Pulitzer Prize Winning, People
Have no fear; Donna Tartt has the uncanny knack of hooking you into a story and keeping you there. Theo, as a narrator, proves most compelling when the reader realizes that he is the practical embodiment of ‘The Unreliable Narrator’. The complicity of the reader choosing to trust Theo’s account of things sets up a tension that makes submerging the reader into Theo’s thoughts, which are our only way of understanding what happens to him, almost hypnotic even if we have the distinct feeling Theo’s testimony may be omitting key nuggets of information. The language itself is visually scrumptious and deeply emotional. One cannot help but feel every emotion Theo feels—I was often wracked with feelings of depression and anxiety much like the protagonist as I read the novel which, spooky as it was, indicated some brilliant story-telling at work.
The problem with a novel of this length and attention to language is that it can get caught up with itself. On one level, Tartt seems to forget details about character traits or descriptions and contradicts herself later in the novel. On another level, her reliance on this type of descriptive, often-philosophical language overpowers the greater demand of writing character and dialogue. It was not uncommon to find Tartt’s own views coming out of characters mouths. I am usually more than game for a lengthy rant on The Meaning of Life but I am also invested in reading a story, not a lecture, and I think it sometimes stalled the motion of the plot.
It is possibly because of this unfortunate habit of straying into the land of Existentialism that The Goldfinch starts strong, has a great climax, but the ending left me somewhat unsatisfied. I realize it may be a big ask to sustain a reader for over seven hundred pages but the novel itself is such an epic of sorts that I found it unconvincing Tartt didn’t have a stronger conclusion in mind. This was frustrating to me because I felt as if plot lines and character arcs were either left hanging in some cases or rushed in others.
The Company You Keep
What Tartt does surprisingly well here, considering it is not known for her work previously, is how she draws such colorful and timely characters. Each seems to have a reason for existing in Theo’s life the way they do and are endearing. Boris, a boy whom Theo meets in his early teen years, is possibly one of the most distinct characters in the novel. Outrageous almost to the point of being a mirage himself, Boris is described as “One of the great friends of my [Theo’s] life”. The relationship Tartt depicts between Boris and Theo is complex, heart-breaking, equal parts intriguing and incredulous. If readers should read The Goldfinch for anyone, it should be for Boris and Theo.
Tartt has a huge investment in the world of art and how Theo’s obsession with it drives the main plot of the novel forward. Her attention to themes of decay, excess, opulence, and religious undertones have echoes of some great Greek Epic. She takes great care with the importance of place and it is very much through Theo’s own transition of location that readers understand how it plays into crafting his interior world.
Structurally, the book starts in New York, hits a midpoint with Las Vegas, which Theo describes as “like being on a different planet”, returns to New York but in a different home, and then climatically concludes with Amsterdam. What is great about this structure is that the reader feels they are also travelling from place to place with the widening of Theo’s experience. The reader becomes invested too in these places, as if they are the tourist and Theo is their guide.
Last Words (from the peanut gallery?)
So a lot of people had something to say about The Goldfinch. Like, a lot. Stephen King liked it: “The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along half a dozen times per decade…connects with the heart as well as the mind” (New York Times Book Review). And another Donna Tartt fan, this time from Vanity Fair, added “She seems to understand all these worlds, high and low, and is on intimate terms with the human struggle to craft some kind of meaning from the brutal inevitably of death”.
With this high praise in mind, The Goldfinch is not going to enchant everyone. But, while it may falter at points, I am most certainly glad I read this book while I did. It captured my imagination, kept me engrossed almost the whole time, and keeps me asking questions. In one of those small but important ways, the way I hope at least one book can, being in someone else’s world can make your world suddenly look a whole lot different.
By Meagan Gove
