Cult novelist Donna Tartt's third book has all her signature thrill bait—rich writing, a protagonist coming of age, at least one murder. It's also nearly 800 pages long. So is it worth the wait?
By Boris Kachka - Elle
Leave it to a minor character to nail the glorious trickery of The Goldfinch—both the 1654 oil masterpiece by Carel Fabritius and the book named for it, Donna Tartt’s somewhat implausible, wholly entrancing third novel from Little, Brown. “They make jokes. They amuse themselves,” says an art smuggler, referring to Fabritius and his Dutch peers. “They build up the illusion, the trick—but, step closer? It falls apart into brushstrokes. Abstract, unearthly. A different and much deeper sort of beauty.” The same could be said of Tartt’s impasto of lush writing and smudgy plotting. All writers of fiction ask us to suspend our disbelief, but Tartt sends it on extended leave—as long as it takes to submit to nearly 800 pages of picaresque sleight of hand.
Tartt’s first novel, The Secret History, published 21 years ago, was a taut exercise by comparison. A highbrow murder mystery involving a cult of privileged classics students at a Bennington-type college, it became a global best-seller and a marketing reference point for every aspiring suspense writer with a history degree. It was a tough act to follow, and Tartt took her time—10 years of it. Her follow-up, The Little Friend—rooted in Tartt’s Southern childhood and indebted to Faulkner and Harper Lee—was an endearing adventure, but, to some, disappointingly earthbound and desultory.
Eleven years after that, The Goldfinch returns us to the haughty, ethereal terrain of The Secret History—antiques, Europhiles, drug cocktails, despair—but broadens the scope. Tartt cites Dickens as a major influence, and Oliver Twist is an obvious model for antihero Theo Decker’s wild ride. Only imagine that Oliver became one of Fagin’s eager thieves, driven by nihilism and an artful-dodger buddy named Boris
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