The Goldfinch: By Donna Tartt -- Review (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
A sumptuous novel,remarkably reminiscent of Great Expectations. I've heard it's not clever to say that because thousands have observed the same Dickensian parallels. It really is a modern-day Great Expectation, though. Until the last hundred pages, I found it impossible to put the book down Especially brilliant were the Las Vegas pages. The very end is wonderful, too, but there is a big chunk of book that bogs down in plot just before the very end. Doesn't matter; great novel. The only thing that prevented me from rating this book 5 stars is that (as other reviewers have pointed out) it could have benefited from a tight edit. That said, I was totally engaged from the novel's start and found the tale so suspenseful that, once I started to read it, I barely did anything else for three days, until I finished the book. The plot and premise strain credibility but as an escapist novel, it would be a good choice for reading on a long plane trip with long delays or layovers or if trapped at home during a days-long ice storm. A couple of things: the dialogue (mostly) rings true thanks to the author's pitch-perfect capture of Boris's Ukrainian-inflected English. That said, there were points where I was amazed (and annoyed) that Theo didn't flat out tell Boris that he was full of BS. That's true friendship, I guess. Or gullibility. Or vulnerability. Also, I started to feel hungover just READING about Theo's and Boris's marathon drinking-and-drugging binges. I also agree with other reviewers in that it may have been more effective to weave in some of the philosophical musings throughout the story instead of back-loading the end of the novel with Deep Thoughts. On the other hand, I can also see how "big picture" reflections wouldn't/couldn't occur to Theo until he'd dried out somewhat and started on his path to atonement. All in all, a sophisticated, well-crafted tale.
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