The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
stephen king liked this book? OK i’ll read it! he did, after all, recommend “the hunger games”.
this book has beauuuuutiful writing (although some egregious uses of a semicolon). donna tartt knows how to craft a sentence. unfortunately, from the perspective of a late-20s man writing about his teenage years? what teenage boy is perceptive enough to pick up that his therapist is most likely newly married with a baby merely from the ring on his finger and tired eyes? i don’t buy it.
plus it seemed like 20 lbs of writing in a 5 lb story. did we really need all that detail? this book could have been half the book and still have been lovely.
some favorite sentences:
“…a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
“what if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? what if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?”
“a great sorrow, and one that i am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. we can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or whats good fro other people. we don’t get to choose the people we are.”

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