Author:Donna Tartt
On holiday I caught up with Donna Tartt’s latest, published with huge hype last year as only the third from Tartt in a near thirty-year career. We’ve discussed her work recently (see my article on the Brat Pack of US fiction) and unlike McInerney, Easton Ellis and Janowitz there is no sense that the best of her career is behind her. Like both the predecessors this is a doorstop (more later) and like The Secret History uses apparently recherche topics – in that case the study of Classics – in this case antique furniture restoration and art history – to power a thrillerish plot.
The set-up sees teen Theo Decker lose his mother as both are caught up in a terrorist bomb blast in a NY museum. Inexplicably he leaves the scene with a valuable painting, the titular Goldfinch, and the rest of the novel sees him attempting to come to terms with his loss and his place in the world – both of which are bound up in the painting. As Theo is bounced around various carers and guardians there are sections in Manhattan high society, in Las Vegas (with his errant dad), and finally in Amsterdam where the fate of the painting and of Theo come to a climax. Along with his deadbeat dad and dad’s girlfriend Xandra the cast includes kindly antique restorer Hobie who offers him sanctuary, and Russian wild child Boris.
Firstly, I really enjoyed reading it. As with The Secret History Tartt exerts a terrific control over the plot and has you racing to find out what happens next. Theo is a likeable character – not least because his reaction to the loss of his mother is complex and takes many years to work out, and involves him making a number of understandable but morally questionable decisions.
But…and there is a but. Everything, everything feels like it is brought into being in the service of the plot. From the stealing of the picture (understandable, part of the set up) to a violent climax that feels out of another novel entirely. Her gift for eerie location is brilliantly realised in the section set in a Las Vegas where the building boom peters out in half-built empty mansions being reclaimed by the desert – but we’re soon whisked away back to NY as the plot motors on. By page 800 when we’re careering around a Christmastime Amsterdam in an international crime caper the plot has piled unlikely event on miraculous escape to become…well about as credible as a Bourne film.
So, this is all about the expectations from someone like Tartt. Lots to like, and a cracking read, but for me the last 150 pages or so undermine the great work that has gone on before.
And as this is all about the plot it was really difficult to write without spoilers!
Length of Read:Long
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
The Secret History and The Little Friend.
One thing you’ve learned
The intricacies of how you launder fake antique furniture.
You certainly make me interested to read it despite your caveat. Ta.
Broadly agree – I haven’t read her other novels and was left with mixed feelings about this one. It has some great set pieces – the opening is riveting for example, and the final section whilst as improbable as @moseleymoles says is unquestionably a page turner. But other sections, like the Las Vegas one, had longeurs and I felt the whole thing could have done with a considerable edit.
I thought this was brilliant, with as gripping a plot as one could wish for rendered with an expert’s eye for detail and character, but like you I got increasingly frustrated as it approached the end – the climax seemed to be endlessly forestalled with lengthy chunks of cod-philosophising and a whole bunch of unnecessary stalking about after hours in Amsterdam. If an editor had been persuasive enough to get her to cut 200-odd pages this may well have been my novel of the decade so far (as it stands the current front-runner remains Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things).
Really looking forward to reading the Michael Faber. When I try and come up with a UK literary heavyweight who can go up against Frantzen, Delillo, Ford, Roth et al etc it’s Faber I think about. And you’re quite right, Tartt’s reached the point when no editor can suggest any significant changes. You know Donna The Great Gatsby wasn’t exactly ruined by Maxwell Perkins running his eye over it..
The problem I had with the novel was the two main characters. I felt I’d spent too much time in their company and they were both at the same time self indulgent and also not really credible. Not that you have to like fictional characters necessarily but if you are expected to spend so much time with them you need to care a bit about what happens to them. It nevertheless did have a lot going for it, enough to make me want to finish it.
Maybe too long also not sure what it wants to be. A thriller or literary fiction. Kind of falls between two stools.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head – The Secret History managed to combine the two brilliantly but here (above all in the Amsterdam section) she writes chunks of literary fiction followed by showdowns in shadowy carparks.
I read this about six months ago in just five days. I think it is the best book I have read in the last few years, and I read a lot.
I would not fault the plot or characterisation at all, nor in fact the theme. Donna Tartt chose a male protagonist, Theo, and very nearly pulls off the difficult feat of writing convincingly across the gender divide. Very few novelists do that in my opinion. Boris is a very entertaining character too I felt. The plot works in the main, the genre shift in the Amsterdam section is quite a surprise, but a wild ride. Actually, I liked the ending but it is the section after Amsterdam that pulls it all together in my view, as a shell shocked Theo searches for a meaning to his life and finds it through the collecting and contemplation of painting. It’s perhaps an ending for the atheists and collectors among us, but one I identified with anyway.
The research is impressive, the writing is accomplished and the attention to detail superb. I even enjoyed the furniture restoration content.
Read it last year whilst on holiday. A few months earlier, when it was up for all sorts of literary awards, I had heard one critic say that this was the year of The Goldfinch. Therefore (I like to use “therefore” to wind up Michael Gove), I had high expectations.
The opening section with the bombing of the Art Gallery and its aftermath met those expectations and all seemed well. Then Theo got whisked off to Las Vegas by his father, turned into a drug dealer overnight and made friends with a preposterous and unreal gangster. Together they spend page after boring page taking drugs. When even Tartt gets bored, she kills off Theo’s father and sends Theo back to New York.
As others have said, there is an attempt to write a crime thriller but I didn’t really care whether anybody survived or not. Just when you think the story has ended, Tartt then sticks on pages of a discussion on the meaning of art. This didn’t fit well with the rest of the book and I found myself skimming it to finally get to the end.
My expectations were not met; I just wish it had all been as good as the opening part. Although, I wouldn’t heartily recommend it, the fact that I can remember it one year on does say something.
I bought it as soon as it was published, but I’ve yet to read it.
First I waited because I love “The Little Friend” so much that I was afraid to be disappointed, then the mixed reviews started to come in, and get more and more negative.
Now I’m just soaking up all of the negative comments until my expectations hit rock bottom – then I’ll read it, and probably be pleasantly surprised… (=The “You’ve got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em” strategy)
Read both of her previous books, both were intriguing until the halfway point, but then meandered, went on too long, and left me feeling they were lost opportunities. I can’t see why there’s been so much fuss about her.
I think it’s a work of genius. Donna Tartt started with a brilliant novel, followed it up a decade later with an even better (and relatively underrated) one, then a decade later topped even that one. Best writer around today in terms of sheer quality of her prose. It glistens. And Boris is a truly unforgettable character. Roll on the next masterpiece, in another 7 years or so…
Very overhyped. And FAR too long.
I really liked it. Sure it does tend to rely on coincidence – but, hey, so did Dickens.
I haven’t read any of her other stuff but have it in the back of my mind for a rainy day.