Donna Tart, The Goldfinch
Apr. 21st, 2014 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sienamysticI mentioned previously that I started reading this book, got about twenty pages in, and realized I wanted to reread The Secret History first - no slight intended to The Goldfinch, but instead a reminder of just how much I love The Secret History. So after my reread, and getting a little sidetracked by a book club book, I've been reading The Goldfinch while I recover from a really wringing bout of a stomach virus.
It's a beautifully written book. Given that it's Donna Tartt, that was probably a given. It's also a compelling book, and I read, captivated, up until about the halfway point, where some frustration set in. I felt a similar problem to what I felt when rereading Lev Grossman's The Magicians - basically that yes, people frequently drink and take drugs, and whatever - but I don't find spending chapters and chapters tagging along for the ride while the characters do so all that compelling. (I can't find a way to say that that doesn't make me sound insanely prudish, but there it is - I was in my early twenties before I even saw pot, and have never contemplated the various locations where it would be best to drop acid. I don't mind reading about it, but I find it tedious as a plot device unless you're Hunter S. Thompson. Also, it worked better for me in A Secret History because, you know, Dionysus.) I can understand that an insanely traumatized young teenager would certainly take comfort in whatever he could put his hands on, but all I tend to get out of it is a vaguely sympathetic sense of nausea (perhaps worsened in this case by the aforesaid stomach virus). It's a hard path to character development for me.
So at a little past the halfway mark, I skimmed fairly ruthlessly forward, although I'll probably go back and fill in things that I brushed past. I stopped closer to the end and dove back in, and again, as I could have predicted, there were some beautiful, thoughtful, heart-striking passages in there that I'll probably want to return to. The skimming says something either about my attention span or about the need for a slightly more ruthless hand with editing the book - I'm not sure which - and while its themes of art actually speak very directly to me and the profession that I'm in, I'm not entirely sure that I'll return to this one as I do to The Secret History. I'm going to let it marinade in my brain a bit and see what floats to the top.
It's a beautifully written book. Given that it's Donna Tartt, that was probably a given. It's also a compelling book, and I read, captivated, up until about the halfway point, where some frustration set in. I felt a similar problem to what I felt when rereading Lev Grossman's The Magicians - basically that yes, people frequently drink and take drugs, and whatever - but I don't find spending chapters and chapters tagging along for the ride while the characters do so all that compelling. (I can't find a way to say that that doesn't make me sound insanely prudish, but there it is - I was in my early twenties before I even saw pot, and have never contemplated the various locations where it would be best to drop acid. I don't mind reading about it, but I find it tedious as a plot device unless you're Hunter S. Thompson. Also, it worked better for me in A Secret History because, you know, Dionysus.) I can understand that an insanely traumatized young teenager would certainly take comfort in whatever he could put his hands on, but all I tend to get out of it is a vaguely sympathetic sense of nausea (perhaps worsened in this case by the aforesaid stomach virus). It's a hard path to character development for me.
So at a little past the halfway mark, I skimmed fairly ruthlessly forward, although I'll probably go back and fill in things that I brushed past. I stopped closer to the end and dove back in, and again, as I could have predicted, there were some beautiful, thoughtful, heart-striking passages in there that I'll probably want to return to. The skimming says something either about my attention span or about the need for a slightly more ruthless hand with editing the book - I'm not sure which - and while its themes of art actually speak very directly to me and the profession that I'm in, I'm not entirely sure that I'll return to this one as I do to The Secret History. I'm going to let it marinade in my brain a bit and see what floats to the top.