Is Donna Tartt's THE GOLDFINCH a great novel?

[ajvenigalla]

Honest question from a person who hasn't read the novel but is interested in doing so in the near future: Is Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch a great novel?

I know it won the Pulitzer Prize. I know it received positive reviews from both critics and reviewers. I know it's hailed in some circles as an heir to the best of Charles Dickens's novels. But the polarized reception everywhere makes me a bit anxious with regard to reading it.

Some high-profile literary voices such as James Wood and Francine Prose panned the novel. A lot of readers complain about how they didn't like the book or how it needed a good edit because it was too long.

So I have some questions: Is this book really great and worth my time? Did it hold up since it released? And did it deserve the Pulitzer Prize? And will this go down as a modern classic of the 21st century?

[Calidore]

Seems like you've already done your due diligence in researching pro and con reactions to the novel. Can anyone else offer better answers to your questions than you've already found? At this point, I'd say you're stalling. :).

In the end, nobody but you can decide whether you'll like the book or not, so just crack the thing open and start reading. If you like it, keep reading. If not, stop.

[ajvenigalla]

^ thanks brah. I intend on reading it

[Pompey Bum]

The short answer is that The Goldfinch is an engrossing and often moving novel and well worth reading. It's probably about 100 pages too long, but that didn't bother me when I read it. Tartt has the narrator keep blabbing well after the plot has wound down. I enjoyed the ideas (s)he was rambling on about. I love long books, though. If you're not used to them, this one may be a challenge. Just set your mind to reading it, don't worry how long it takes, and enjoy yourself.

The slightly longer answer is that part of reason for the "bipolar" reaction you mention is that she is a reclusive character (rumored for a while to be dead) who has sometimes suffered "bad vibes" with the publishing world by not playing the celebrity for their promotion purposes (the industry wants hot authors, not aloof intellectuals); and by keeping notebooks for years without submitting a draft for publication (hence the rambling at the end of The Goldfinch). A small number of academic elites have joined the fun, too, because they certainly never gave her leave to act like she was above the system--who does she think she is, J.D Sallinger or someone?

As an example of how it all works together, the opinions I just mentioned were not widely reported until Tartt refused to do a feature piece on The Goldfinch for Vanity Fair; so Vanity Fair came up with an article about the divergence of reviews instead. It was a rather hand-wringing piece--oh how unfair of academia to say these things!--but it got the things said, and you and I came to hear about them, unfair or not. Business is business. (And to readers who couldn't make it through a long book like The Goldfinch, such reports are eminently face saving).

Personally I think that comparisons between Tartt and Dickens are largely facile. The Goldfinch has more in common with Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, a book it often references, than with David Copperfield or Oliver Twist (Boris is more Rogozhin than the Artful Dodger). But Tartt is very much sui generis. One of the supposedly cutting criticisms of The Goldfinch was that it is a children's tale for adults. I'm not sure I disagree with that, nor am I sure Tartt would. In a way, her ability to write like that is her gift--and likewise for Dickens.

If you get a chance, read The Secret History, too. It is not as artistically mature as The Goldfinch, but it is funnier and just as much fun to read. Long books become short books when you are having a good time. Enjoy!

[ajvenigalla]

^ interesting.

I have been hearing about how The Goldfinch was too long and needed editing. I guess that may be so if one wanted to make a more "perfect" novel. However, many of the greatest novels are arguably "too long" (War and Peace, Les Miserables, The Brothers Karamazov, etc.) and I think that excess is not a vice. I haven't read Goldfinch yet, so I have yet to make a case as to whether the excess is bad or not, but I think that in the attempt to condemn excess I think people fail to realize the goodness or even greatness of excess properly done.

Perhaps it may very well be less flawed with less pages, but I would venture to say that "less flawed" doesn't always mean "greater."

[Pompey Bum]

Perhaps not. But I think Calidore has the pertinent point: quit stalling and start reading! :)

Or if The Goldfinch seems too intimidating, try The Secret History. That's a college story, though, so if you're younger than that (sorry, I forget) you should stick with The Goldfinch for now. They're both a lot of fun.

[ajvenigalla]

^ I am 16. When I get me to a bookstore, I will search for The Goldfinch. I already have the Ebook for The Secret History

[Pompey Bum]

Good luck with it. Like I said, stick with it and don't worry about how long it takes to get through. I'll be happy to talk to you about it as you read. I really think it's great that a teenager's got the pluck to do this. Let me know how it goes! :)

[entropic island]

(And to readers who couldn't make it through a long book like The Goldfinch, such reports are eminently face saving).!

yes because the only reason someone would give up on a donna tarrt book is the length

[Tyrion Cheddar]

When I read the above about The Goldfinch winning the Pulitzer and being compared to Dickens, I almost fell off my chair. Let me tell you all why.
In the early 1980s, I was a student at Bennington College. As some of you may know, Bennington had a reputation for producing great and famous writers, among other things. (Bret Easton Ellis was a classmate and acquaintance of mine and, while he may not be a great writer by any means, he wrote and published Less Than Zero while we were there and it exploded onto the scene and made him a celebrity overnight.)
I stayed at Bennington through two of the summer breaks to take writing workshops, one of the things the school was famous for, because their reputation enabled them to bring some heavy hitting authors to the school to teach these intimate (twelve people in a group, maybe) workshops in which you'd get to bring in your work and have it read and critiqued by these authors as well as your fellow students. Which brings me to my tale about Donna Tartt.
I didn't know her personally, but at a school of only 600 students, everyone sort of knew everyone, at least a little, by name or association, and she was in one of these workshops I was in. I remember her as this very quiet, pale, red-haired girl who I always saw hanging around with the same one friend, another very quiet dark-haired girl who was also in the workshop.
So, the day came when the rest of us had all brought in our works in progress and now it was her turn. She brought in two finished chapters of something she was working on which would become The Secret History. The author leading the workshop responded to it very differently than to any of ours, telling Donna it was "word perfect", that she shouldn't change anything and even offering to show it to her agent. A couple of years later I was sitting in front of the tube on evening, and there was Donna on Charlie Rose, talking about The Secret History.
So while I'm not entirely shocked by the reaction to The Goldfinch, given all this and the response to The Secret History, The Pulitzer...I mean, **** me. ;-)
And here I end my tale, and prepare to drink myself into a stupor sufficient to believe my own bullcrap about my actually being an undiscovered genius who could have achieved all the same as Donna Tartt and received the same accolades, but who simply *chose* not to. :-0

[Iain Sparrow]

While reading *'The Goldfinch', I came to wonder just how far literary standards have fallen.
It is not a great book, there is nothing great about it; not the prose, plot, characters, thematic resonance.. it explores (in excruciating depth) pedestrian emotions that will only resonate with pedestrian readers. I could not finish the book. Goodness knows how bad the last half is.
I read more than my share of trash, but I know it's trash and I know the difference between trash and treasure. 'The Goldfinch' is a preposterous story; great fiction deals in the truth, and 'The Goldfinch' cuts corners and when not cutting corners... it is profoundly tedious and boring.

*I was loaned the book by my next door neighbor, who I thought had better taste in literature.

[Pompey Bum]

When I read the above about The Goldfinch winning the Pulitzer and being compared to Dickens, I almost fell off my chair. Let me tell you all why.
In the early 1980s, I was a student at Bennington College. As some of you may know, Bennington had a reputation for producing great and famous writers, among other things. (Bret Easton Ellis was a classmate and acquaintance of mine and, while he may not be a great writer by any means, he wrote and published Less Than Zero while we were there and it exploded onto the scene and made him a celebrity overnight.)
I stayed at Bennington through two of the summer breaks to take writing workshops, one of the things the school was famous for, because their reputation enabled them to bring some heavy hitting authors to the school to teach these intimate (twelve people in a group, maybe) workshops in which you'd get to bring in your work and have it read and critiqued by these authors as well as your fellow students. Which brings me to my tale about Donna Tartt.
I didn't know her personally, but at a school of only 600 students, everyone sort of knew everyone, at least a little, by name or association, and she was in one of these workshops I was in. I remember her as this very quiet, pale, red-haired girl who I always saw hanging around with the same one friend, another very quiet dark-haired girl who was also in the workshop.
So, the day came when the rest of us had all brought in our works in progress and now it was her turn. She brought in two finished chapters of something she was working on which would become The Secret History. The author leading the workshop responded to it very differently than to any of ours, telling Donna it was "word perfect", that she shouldn't change anything and even offering to show it to her agent. A couple of years later I was sitting in front of the tube on evening, and there was Donna on Charlie Rose, talking about The Secret History.
So while I'm not entirely shocked by the reaction to The Goldfinch, given all this and the response to The Secret History, The Pulitzer...I mean, **** me. ;-)
And here I end my tale, and prepare to drink myself into a stupor sufficient to believe my own bullcrap about my actually being an undiscovered genius who could have achieved all the same as Donna Tartt and received the same accolades, but who simply *chose* not to. :-0

You were Judy Poovey, weren't you? ;-)

[Pompey Bum]

ajvenigalla: Another problem with Tartt's reception was created by a rave review that Stephen King wrote about The Goldfinch in The New York Times. It gave many Stephen King fans the idea that the book was, you know, Stephen King, when it's obviously nothing of the kind. That makes for some ugly blowback from time to time, but to each his own.

Anyway, in case you're interested, here are a couple posts I wrote about Tartt--mostly about Secret History--on the Modern Classics thread (and here's the whole thread: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?80550-Nominations-for-New-Classics)


Donna Tartt is a sentimental favorite. I read The Secret History when it came out, not long after attending a somewhat similar school. I reread it this year and noticed all the hilarious black comedy I missed when I was a dumb kid and mostly interested in the thriller aspect. The Goldfinch was about a hundred pages longer than it needed to be, but I loved its prose and didn't care. I like Tartt herself, too: the way she ignores the publishing world (and it's marketing machine) for decades at a time, then comes back after everyone's forgotten about her. I appreciate her limits as a writer, though, even if I like the way she bucks post-modern theory. If her books survive at all, it will be because the people love her and not academia.


As far as Donna Tartt goes, I reread The Secret History this year (I hadn't read it since it came out) and got all the black comedy I had missed as a kid. The epilogue, which I remember finding long and anticlimactic the first time, was particularly hilarious. There was also a relatively minor character named Judy Poovey--a promiscuous airhead--who I found unnecessary and irritating on the first reading (the type was an all too fresh memory from college at the time). It turns out Judy Poovey is a riot--although strictly as a lampoon. That's why she is always turning up unnecessarily: she's comic relief. Judy Poovey is now my favorite character from The Secret History. And her section in the epilogue is the funniest part of the book.

[ajvenigalla]

^ thanks Pompey

[ajvenigalla]

Bump.

[Clopin]

Bump.

hahahahahahaha, cute.

[Tyrion Cheddar]

You were Judy Poovey, weren't you? ;-)

<raises hand> I confess. :-0 'Hampden College' of the novel is funny to me not only because of its obvious basis in the Bennington College of that day, but also of Hampshire College, from whom Bennington inhaled a number of classmates of mine. So you see, let me just point out, 'Hampden' is kind of a blending of the two names, is my point, is the thing I'm trying to say.

[ajvenigalla]

So I just started on the novel. The first two chapters feel really elaborate. It feels something out of Great Expectations, but I was strangely engrossed in the otherwise elaborate and somewhat excessive chapters.

Perhaps I may very well like, perhaps even love, the novel

[Pompey Bum]

Good luck with it AJ! Take your time and just read to enjoy. Stay with it, though. Let us know how it goes! :)

[chrisvia]

Calidore nailed it. If you haven't read it, don't seek to learn everyone else's opinion of the text, not even those of famous critics. Not only should you be the judge of whether a book is great; doing what you're doing is a good way to bring all kinds of unnecessary baggage to the experience.

Act on your interest and be confident in your abilities to experience the text for yourself! Don't let the jaded opinions of others diminish it before it even starts.

But since you asked: Along with All the Light We Cannot See, The Goldfinch perpetuated my dwindling flame of hope in contemporary fiction.

[ajvenigalla]

^ ah, I loved ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, which was one of my favorite reads in recent times

[Pompey Bum]

Act on your interest and be confident in your abilities to experience the text for yourself! Don't let the jaded opinions of others diminish it before it even starts.

Wise advice for this or any other book.

[ajvenigalla]

I just finished the first three chapters.

It's slow and elaborately written (in a way it recalls Charles Dickens's GREAT EXPECTATIONS in terms of elaborate style and 19th-century tone transplanted to the 21st century). However, it was engrossing in its own way. I felt like I wanted to keep reading.

[Pompey Bum]

I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. The book makes nods at a number of classic novels, including Great Expectations. Tartt is a little playful about that sort of thing in The Goldfinch. Notice the times she uses some version of the name Pip as the story unfolds: Pippa for the novel's Estella; Popper/Popchik for the puppy that is a symbol of Theo's underlying damaged innocence during his adventures with Boris and time on the road. Mr. Barbour seemed to me to be a kind of lampoon of Mr. Jarndyce from Bleak House, or perhaps of a general type of "older benefactor" character from Dickens. Boris obviously has something to do with the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist, although he is even more like character of Rogozhin from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (and note how many times that novel is referred to as you or discussed in The Goldfinch). I forget exactly how much has happened by the third chapter, and I don't want to give any of the plot away, but I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. Stay at it! :)

[ajvenigalla]

^thanks man.

I can already pick up the shades of Charles Dickens

[Calidore]

Calidore nailed it. If you haven't read it, don't seek to learn everyone else's opinion of the text, not even those of famous critics. Not only should you be the judge of whether a book is great; doing what you're doing is a good way to bring all kinds of unnecessary baggage to the experience.

Act on your interest and be confident in your abilities to experience the text for yourself! Don't let the jaded opinions of others diminish it before it even starts.

But since you asked: Along with All the Light We Cannot See, The Goldfinch perpetuated my dwindling flame of hope in contemporary fiction.

I like your opening sentence very much, but I should clarify that I wasn't telling him not to seek others' opinions; rather, since he'd already found a good balance of opinions that didn't convince him either way, to go ahead and check the book out for himself.

I think it's perfectly fine to read criticism in order to avoid wasting time on a book you wouldn't like. Doesn't always work--I'd very much like back the time I spent on War and Peace--but life is short and books are many.

[Pompey Bum]

I disagree a little, Calidore. I love to read reviews of books I have already read, but I pointedly avoid them before starting, just so I can have my own experience of a book without the need for some critic or lit critter's approval. I find Pulitzer and Booker nominations a helpful way to beat the odds without actually reading a review. I occasionally run into books I wish I hadn't started, although it's pretty rare (and I finish them just the same--even the really long ones). I also loved War and Peace.

[chrisvia]

Luckily, in this case, the extratextual exposure resulted in a zero-sum game, but I am a big advocate of "going in cold" as they say. Although, if we really break this down, we will realize that, along the way in our reader's journey, we establish a sort of immanent rubric by which we measure a work before we begin. In my opinion, the best way to experience a text that we deem of worth is:

1. Read the text (at least the first 50pp to determine whether to continue).
2. Read reviews, opinions, criticism, and any supplementary text within the work itself (e.g. introduction, afterword, etc.).
3. Read the text again.

This is, of course, to say that there is only one way to read a book and that is to re-read the work. On the second reading, you will be able to temper your own and evaluate others' findings, which is all quite fun!

Calidore has asserted another great point, like Hippocrates well before him: Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή (life is short, art is long). Over time, as you continue to reinforce your personal immanent rubric, you will by necessity get both more selective and more intuitive--but I still advocate at least the first 50pp of a book of interest over letting others instill predispositions.

Parting thought:
O how many times have I abandoned a book only to find it and savour it later in life!

[Pompey Bum]

I find the "look Inside" function at Amazon helpful. It almost always tells me if I am going to find a writer's style annoying, which something I am especially wary of. I may or may not like a book once I'm done, but an irritating style can make for a hellish slog.

[Calidore]

I disagree a little, Calidore. I love to read reviews of books I have already read, but I pointedly avoid them before starting, just so I can have my own experience of a book without the need for some critic or lit critter's approval.

I'm not sure where approval enters into it; I'm just seeking another's opinion, same as asking friends. A good reviewer will go into detail about aspects he likes or doesn't like about the book, and I can decide which I care about and which I don't.


I find Pulitzer and Booker nominations a helpful way to beat the odds without actually reading a review.

They can help, but an award is like a plain star rating--not a lot of info by itself. When I picked up A Confederacy of Dunces, I knew it had won the Pulitzer but didn't know why. 100 pages later, I still didn't know why, but I knew I'd read about 99 pages more than I needed to. The Pulitzer's credibility has been forever tarnished for me because of that book.


I also loved War and Peace.

Yeah, I'm definitely in the minority there. The 1960s Russian and 1970s BBC TV adaptations are very much worth watching, though.

To address chrisvia's other point: Just reading the first 50 pages is something, but some books may not get going until later after the groundwork is laid. Can't think of one offhand now, but a good movie example would be The Wages of Fear. It's going on a hour before the actual plot kicks in, but that's deliberate on the part of the director--he took his time showing us life in the squalid little dead-end town so we'd understand why these men were willing to risk their lives just for a chance to get out. The boredom was an ingredient of the filmmaking rather than a side effect. Someone going into the movie blind wouldn't necessarily have gotten that, and if he left he'd have missed the second half of a killer suspense film. Someone who read a review, however, will know what to expect and be prepared. I personally like to be prepared.

[Pompey Bum]

Another way I beat the odds is to listen to author interviews on NPR (when they bother with them anymore). Those are usually enough to let me know if I'd be interested. I hate NPR reviews, though, and always snap them off before I become contaminated (and end up talking like that).

[ajvenigalla]

I am now on Chapter 5, where Boris is introduced.

It's wonderful so far. It's quite long, elaborated, and verbose. But that's no real problem. It harkens back beautifully to the best of Dickens's first-person narratives such as Great Expectations and David Copperfield, with their elaborate and beautiful prose styles and graceful grand narratives.

[ajvenigalla]

Now finished with five whole chapters

[Pompey Bum]

Congratulations, AJ. I found the chapters involving Boris and Theo in suburban Las Vegas to have been some of the best in the novel; by which I mean I found the central metaphor for post-Recession America, that of a mostly abandoned, barely finished, housing development, being slowly reclaimed by the desert, as alienated teenagers and dubious adults fumble through it, to have been apt and effective. Boris is a great character, too. As I mentioned above, he has a little of the Artful Dodger about him, and a lot of Rogozhin, from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot--a book The Goldfinch frequently mentions. In fact, he loves Theo, which is more than the Dodger ever did Oliver Twist (he's using Oliver the whole time and ditches him in a pinch). Boris is Theo's dark alter ego, as Rogozhin was to Myshkin. Rogozhin was darker, but Boris is dark enough. Congratulations on having come so far. There are things going on beneath the surface of the plot at this point, but I don't want to give them away. I hope you continue to enjoy it. :)

[ajvenigalla]

^ ah thanks Pompey. I noticed some of the roles The Idiot played in the novel.

[ajvenigalla]

I finally finished The Goldfinch, and I loved it. Took a month to finish all 771 pages. Yes, it's flawed. Yes, the Amsterdam section was a bit too long for its own good. And perhaps it was a bit excessive. But who cares. Such a compelling story told in such compelling, poetic, and tactile prose. I still gave it a 5/5 star rating.

It's that wonderful.

I have several thoughts that I will take a while to jot down. But THE GOLDFINCH was amazing. Theo and Boris are now quite memorable and etched in my memory as memorable literary creations.

[Pompey Bum]

Congratulations, AJ! Glad you enjoyed it. I'm sure you'll want to take a break from her for now, but be sure to read The Secret History at some point. If you have a taste for Tartt, you'll love it.

[ajvenigalla]

^ yeah, it will be a while before I go onto another Donna Tartt novel or before I reread THE GOLDFINCH.

But yeah. THE GOLDFINCH was a remarkably rewarding experience.

[ajvenigalla]

Extended thoughts:

One of the main reasons we tend to revisit the works of Charles Dickens and the great 19th-century masters such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville is that, apart from the profound themes and stories in their works, there remains a certain richness in the style. Consider this passage from Dickens’s masterpiece Bleak House:


Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

This passage, full of elaborated description of fog, is very unlikely to make it into modern fiction, largely due to its baroque construction, which could cause it to fly beyond the heads of many a reader today. In our quest for minimalism and a “less is more” sentiment, we have run away from proper indulgence that was possessed by many of our 19th-century forebears and, in the last century, authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy.

Which is why The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s acclaimed, award-winning, and polarizing long novel, reads so wonderfully today. Its 771 pages carry the beauty that marked the best of Charles Dickens — the Dickens of Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Bleak House, the Dickens of long, serialized, incident-based stories such as these. Its prose carries a tactile weight and poetic beauty to it, a weight and beauty so often shied away from on the part of many a writer. Its story and characterization is one for the ages, so beautifully constructed and almost richly chaotic and rambling, its characters so memorable and colorful that they remain etched on the mind for almost forever (Theo and Boris come to mind, as do other “smaller” characters such as Andy Barbour, Pippa, and Hobie).

Consider one of the opening passages:


“Chaotic room service trays; too many cigarettes; lukewarm vodka from duty-free. During those restless, shut-up days, I got to know every inch of the room as a prisoner comes to know his cell. It was my first time in Amsterdam; I’d seen almost nothing of the city and yet the room itself, in its bleak, drafty, sunscrubbed beauty, gave a keen sense of Northern Europe, a model of the Netherlands in miniature: whitewash and Protestant probity, co-mingled with deep-dyed luxury brought in merchant ships from the East. I spent an unreasonable amount of time scrutinizing a tiny pair of gilt-framed oils hanging over the bureau, one of peasants skating on an ice-pond by a church, the other a sailboat flouncing on a choppy winter sea: decorative copies, nothing special, though I studied them as if they held, encrypted, some key to the secret heart of the old Flemish masters. Outside, sleet tapped at the windowpanes and drizzled over the canal; and though the brocades were rich and the carpet was soft, still the winter light carried a chilly tone of 1943, privation and austerities, weak tea without sugar and hungry to bed.”

Right in the beginning of the story, Donna Tartt catches and awes the reader with her wonderful sense of imagery, her willingness to focus on the small and large details that makes the novel so exhausting and yet so wonderful at the same time.

I am all too familiar with some of the harsh criticisms directed at Tartt’s style, that it’s overwritten fluff, that it’s too indulgent for its own good, that it belongs in a children’s book and nowhere near a Serious Modern Novel, that it needed a stern editor ready to purge the dross and bring the novel down to 300 pages (or even 200 pages, if some sterner minimalists had their way) rather than the horrible 771 pages, and that Tartt’s overindulgence is indicative of the problem of writers being too indulgent nowadays.

I would express my disagreement and argue that it is largely due to Tartt’s neo-romanticism and baroque attention to detail that allows The Goldfinch to move beyond the mere story and take on a beauty of its own. The almost-rambling indulgence may be off-putting to some (perhaps this is why many have taken an aversion to the 19th-century classics), but the rambling allows Tartt to authentically capture the voice of its first-person Dickensian narrator Theo Decker, whose mind rambles, stumbles, indulges, and elaborates. This indulgence also brings to it a richness and a beauty that marked the best of classical novels and often lacking in our novels today (though contemporary authors such as Thomas Pynchon and Anthony Doerr still specialize in rich prose that evokes beauty and audacity).

More impressive than the prose style, however, is Tartt's genius in storytelling and capturing the authentic voices of its distinctive characters. Most of the storytelling is based on an incidental first-person autobiographical account, thus arguably recalling Great Expectations and David Copperfield. Thus, there is a lack of propulsive plotting as one would see in other novels, and sometimes this structure can be exhausting, specifically with the Amsterdam section. However, the rambling narrative is full of life and awe, even amid the apparently disorderly and fatalistic tone. I cared for the characters, particularly Theo and Boris. They are some of the most authentically captured fictional characters I have ever read. Even if they aren't always "likable," Tartt so vividly draws these characters together that it's impressive to behold.

The length of the book is another positive in its favor. I am all aware that there were complaints about the book's massive length, that it was a sign of overindulgence on the part of the author, that the book needed a strong editor with a red pen to cross out all the boring parts and make it more story-focused. I would disagree with this. I would say that for an ambitious literary story like The Goldfinch, a longer length was perhaps needed in order to capture the exhausting and engrossing narrative that this story is based on. To pare it down in the name of "editing and restraint" would have taken away from the exuberant and lively richness that marked this book — a richness that sometimes exhausts and goes overboard, but a richness that always satisfies and involves.

For long stories like these, I think author Chigozie Obioma had these wise words to say, that "the novels that are remembered, that become monuments, would in fact be those which err on the part of audacious prose, which occasionally allow excess rather than those which package a story -- no matter how affecting -- in inadequate prose."

That is why I believe that The Goldfinch will live on to become a literary masterpiece and a classic of the 21st century, much like Charles Dickens's novels remain as classics today. It does err in its excess at times, but that doesn't take away from the greatness and the mastery of the overall novel, which remains one of the most satisfying literary experiences ever in my mind.

[Pompey Bum]

Great essay, AJ. I've given my (high) opinion of Tartt already, so I would just repeat quickly that some of the static she gets from time has little to do with her prose and much to do with her hesitation to play the celebrity game, and especially her refusal to write many books in the short term, to be can securely flogged by her publishers while she is still a hot property. Don't look for another book from her for another decade or so.