The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 5/5 cats
okay. so i read it. and i don’t want to be all gloaty-gus for those of you who still have to wait three whole months to get your hands on a copy, but i will say, in brief, that it is worth waiting for. it is worth waiting three months for, as you knew it would be, but i don’t know if i can wait another eleven years for another book.
because she’s still got it. it is beautifully written. it is everything you hoped it would be: characters as complicated and nuanced as real people. situations alternately lovely and bleak. story that tightens up as you are nearing the finish line, ripping you into two parts “must find out what happens,” and “must read slowly or it will be over too soon.”
i read the synopsis of the book pretty much as soon as it was announced, and then carefully forgot what it said, because i didn’t want to have anything in my head as i read it. i wanted a complete discovery.
and the synopsis copy was very careful in what it revealed.
so i am going to have to, for now, be as respectfully careful. and maybe i will come back closer to the release date and give more specifics, but i really just want to squee here and be enthusiastic and say: there is so much to like about this book!
for example, there is something that is announced at the beginning of the book: one of the Very Big Things that happens in life. and the scene that culminates in this Very Big Thing is excruciating. in a good way. you know what is going to happen, but you don’t know when, or how, and there is such delicious tension and you wait for that other shoe to drop, marveling both at her prose, and her ability to tease you during the whole of that opening chapter. wonderful.
and then after that, there’s another 700 pages of wonderful.
quickies:
boris is perfect and i love him.
the “art underworld” mentioned is way cooler than what you probably usually think of when those words are mentioned. no bored sneers, asymmetrical haircuts and avant-garde attitude here!
everything else i try to write, i just keep deleting. i can’t. not yet. i meant to write a “proper” review of this, but everything keeps coming out too specific, too fraught with danger.
just – continue to be excited about this one for now, because it is staggeringly good and i don’t want to ruin it with any of my clumsy words just yet.
…………………………………………………………………………………………
i have been promised an ARC of this.
who wants to be my friend now???
IT IS HEEEEEERE!!!!
well, hello there, lovely…
771 pages of MINE!
