January 26, 2014

The Goldfinch - Part II The Book


Look Inside!



........or maybe don't bother.....

I wasn't familiar with the work of Donna Tartt, the author of the eponymous novel, but the media buzzed and I thought ok, here's a new novel by a well-known American woman author, I'll go for it. Stephen King gushed in the New York Times:
"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."
A no-brainer, right? So I buy the hardback as a gift for my sister-in-law and a kindle copy for my ipad.

It opens with a twenty-something year old Theo holed up in a hotel in The Netherlands. Then fast backward to the museum in NYC, an explosion (terrorist?) during which his mother dies, and the painting (The Goldfinch) is taken /stolen / saved by Theo, the 13 year-old protagonist. A young teenager might thrill to the long, naughty drug-taking and booze-swilling narratives, the odd friendships, the compromised father, the rich friends, the bizarre friends.

Francine Prose (love her name) in The New York Review of Books lists some of the many astonishing clichés that run through it. I agree: the language so predictable you can surf through rapidly. A page-turner because the paragraphs have no heft, no resistance. And the characters feel shallow and unconvincing. Prose's review is the best I've read.
I've gotten to the point where the protagonist Theo has unwrapped the treasured canvas a few times, and is back in New York City after months of crazy days in Vegas. Theo has reconnected with Pippa, a girl who was present at the beginning.Their relationship resembles a cheap version of Pip's obsession with Estella in Great Expectations. (It turns out Tartt devoured Dickens)........ 



Here are some delicious mixed metaphors and mixed-up images from half-way through the book, when Theo has been ill and is recovering in the City:
"Time slid from under me in drifts like ice skids on the highway, punctuated by sudden sharp flashes where my wheels caught and I was flung into ordinary time....."
This flung me into ordinary time, andI realized I have two other excellent books to finish plus US and French taxes. After these, I might finish the book. Not sure if "might" is right. 

So how does one explain the success story?

     Brilliant marketing, fabulous timing
Donna Tartt revealed in a (rare) interview that she was unaware that a major art exhibit which included the Goldfinch would open in New York during October 2013!! (Official on sale date: October 22nd). Surprise! Bookstores and museum stores were/are ablaze with them. 
The Goldfinch has been in the top five of the New York Times bestseller in both print/plus e-books category and hardcover sales since November 24th 2014. I checked. And it is currently number two.

       Potential readers Teenagers. Then twenty-somethings looking for a read, art lovers, thirty-something airline passengers on business trips with long stopovers, forty-something city-dwellers, museum-goers, stoners, ex-stoners, nostalgic recovering alcoholics, early-, middle- and late-middle aged book discussion group members, National Institute on Drug Abuse / NIH librarians etc.

      Yearning: people are searching for something evocative and mystical as the painting itself, a narrative that connects them with another world and transcends time. In other words, to be transported by a thing of beauty, on the wings of prose (if you'll allow me one little cliché!).

In an interview Tartt states: 
"....some of the earliest scenes in “The Goldfinch” were taken from notes dated 1993. “I was writing for a while not knowing what I was writing,” she said. “That’s the way it’s been with all my books. Things will come to you and you’re not going to know exactly how they fit in. You have to trust in the way they all fit together, that your subconscious knows what you’re doing.” 
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/interview-the-very-very-private-life-of-ms-donna-tartt-29780543.html

Perhaps Tartt trusted too much. Pumped and hyped and 784 pages long, the book lets us down. 
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PS In case the book proves too complicated, the plot too abstruse, there is now --tah-dah --

'Sidekick' for The Goldfinch  by Book Buddy- a reader's guide 
Read this analysis alongside the The Goldfinch to get chapter-by-chapter overviews that clarifies any confusing encounters.......Compare this book to Greek tragedies to see how death portrays a universal theme that has great impacts (sic) on any protagonist......
  
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
·  Price: $30.00 US/$33.00 CAN
·  Pages: 784
·  Physical Dimensions: 6" x 9-1/4"
·  ISBN-13: 9780316055437
·  On Sale Date: 10/22/2013