The Goldfinch Book Review by Matt Orlando

Not interested in Matt’s opinion of “The Goldfinch”? We understand…but you should look into Donna Tartt’s work here:

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Apple Books | Amazon | Goodreads | Wikipedia

The Goldfinch Movie (2019)

About Donna Tartt

From her Wiki here:

Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American author. Tartt's novels are The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). Tartt won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for The Goldfinch in 2014. Donna was included in Time magazine's 2014 "100 Most Influential People" list.

She was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and is a graduate of Bennington College. I found out she handwrites her novels in an interview on the Independent, which is borderline strange or insane…I don’t know which.

Editorial Reviews

A long-awaited, elegant meditation on love, memory, and the haunting power of art....Eloquent and assured, with memorable characters....A standout--and well-worth the wait.

―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

It's a classic...If you haven't read it, read it. If you have, read it again.

―Andy Cohen, Today Show

Where to begin? Simply put, I'm indescribably jealous of any reader picking up this masterpiece for the first time. And once they do, they will long remember the heartrending character of Theo Decker and his unthinkable journey.

―Sarah Jessica Parker for Goop

Matt’s Review

How do you even start a book review of The Goldfinch?

I barely knew how to start reading the book, and I’ll explain that in further detail in a moment. Should you even write a book review of The Goldfinch? I don’t mean to start by blowing so much smoke up the book’s, or Donna Tartt’s backside, but when you read a book like that I think you go through some sort of change, and maybe even a large one if you’re paying close enough attention. But isn't that what books are for? Stories for that matter. I mean, aren’t we all telling a story about ourselves to ourselves and the world around us at the same time? Not always as separate things, but more like how we fit into it, that our narrative may be so intertwined to our limited perceptions that we think we have something to do with how the world is? But do we? And don’t we?

This book came to me as a gift after at least ten requests to buy the damn thing by my friend Marshal, who was going through the book for a third time. Then my friend, and book fiend, Chelsey of @chelseylovestoread got tired of me not having it, and bought it for my birthday… or maybe it was Christmas. I have no concept of time.

The Goldfinch sat for a bit, I’ll be honest, not because I just didn’t want to read it, but because I might not have wanted to read it.

I generally like to read books that go down easy, chewing gum for the mind so-to-speak, things that won’t make me have to think too much, but will entertain. You know, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Patterson, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Christopher Moore. Thrillers and horrors, here and there, a good John Grisham from time to time, and a tasty Michael Crichton to wash it down. All great authors, but I don’t find myself looking up too many words, or necessarily having to use too much of my limited brain power to follow along.

So, keeping that in mind, along with the fact that I barely graduated high school, you won’t find me dancing around on the pages of books like The Goldfinch, Pulitzer Prize or not.

It’s just not in my general wheelhouse where I read books for entertainment, and the sort of fun that you’d probably relegate to a cool movie, one that isn’t going to garner any academy awards.

I’m not going to try and fake it here; I had never even heard of the book until my friends “made” me read it. And not that I don’t enjoy books outside of my usual genres, it’s just that if people don’t point out bitchin books they’ve read, or more importantly buy them for me, I tend to stay to swimming with certain fishes, that while they may be of different species, they go down the same way, kind of like eating sushi.

The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel, a book I had reviewed in one of my past blogs, was one of those books (also gifted by @chelslovestoread) that was really outside of that sushi ensemble, sort of like trying something new and exotic that wasn’t on the menu, but you saw an actual Japanese person order it... and only then did you decided to venture outside of your comfort zone. Someone who had read my IG post on the book, had said it wasn’t her jam. And I completely got that. It wasn’t like anything I had ever read before, and it took me a bit to get into the flow, eventually becoming amazed that anyone could even use words like that. Every line was like a poem, in and unto itself, while moving the story towards an end with purpose, and not just random beautiful execution. I was grateful that I’d had the pleasure of reading it.

When I’d emptied my stacked shelf of go-to, easy-to-digest little wonders, I finally picked up Donna Tartt’s, The Goldfinch.

I’ll be honest, it took a few days of reading to get into Donna’s writing style. Story style. Are they even styles? Or is it just how this person sees the world? Because everything I’d read, every word, was a description in such detail, that it was going down like a buffet of rich hors d’oeuvres, (I’m really sorry for all of the food analogies) each bite too much to handle, with more trays being set in front of me that I hadn’t ordered. I wondered if I would even get through the book, or if I even had wanted to. Fans of the book, have now quit reading this review. But hold on…

After my initial baptism in cold water, I found myself falling into the world she’d created.

Thankfully, I didn’t even know what the story was about, something I do purposefully on most books: not reading the back cover, and just going along for the ride. Then, as I had done with Nick Cutter’s, The Troop, and for completely different reasons, I had quit reading The Goldfinch at night. Nighttime is wind-down time, a great place to read those vanilla-smooth books until I drift off in peaceful, sometimes nightmarish, sleep, thanks to Nick Cutter. Oh, how I hate you, Nick Cutter. Read The Troop, I still dare you. But I didn’t read The Goldfinch at night because the book would immerse me so deeply, and held me so completely into the life of our hero Theo, that I couldn’t, and didn’t want to let go. I would worry about Theo when I wasn’t reading the book. I would plead with him to make the right choices…

I cared about him, as you will when you read the book, if you haven’t already, and you will not find a single way to judge him. Donna Tartt saw to that.

She makes it hard to judge anyone ever again.

I will not go into what the plot is, or what the book is about, just that you should read it. Donna Tartt is so intelligent, that the only person I did in fact judge was myself. It made me wish I had tried harder in school. It made me want to become a better writer. A better learner. Her knowledge of so many different arts, languages, cultures, is stunning. After you finish the book, you will feel like you’ve visited different countries, states, and cities, even though you didn’t leave your couch. She will leave you awestruck, and all of those details, that at first, I thought were unnecessary, and maybe (don’t hate me) boring, eventually quickened my heart and opened my mind in ways that very few books have done. I won’t compare any here, because there is no comparison.

I watched The Goldfinch movie based on the book after I had read it.

I couldn’t imagine how, or even why they would try such an endeavor. Marshal had told me not to watch it. I suppose I should have listened. Having made movies myself, I know how hard they are to make. To get financing for, to hire the right crew, the right actors, to have many people believe in you, and follow you through to the end. It’s borderline impossible, to be honest. But people do it. I did it. And if I can do it, anyone can. But it's still almost impossible.

In the end, I thought they did their best.

it was well shot, I thought cast fairly well, the actors not looking like who I had pictured in some cases, but were such brilliant performers, I put my prejudices for my own imaginations aside, and let it play out. I’m not so sure that I would have known what the story was about had I not read the book beforehand, and wondered how it was received by the people who’d watched it. I didn’t look at the reviews. At the end of the day, I thought they shouldn’t have even tried it. Mostly because I thought it would take ten movies, or more, to convey what I had experienced in the book, knowing full well that it was just that: my experience. And even then, I don’t think they should have tried it.

I can’t imagine anyone not being as awestruck as me, reading The Goldfinch, unless they were only eating at the same sushi restaurant, I’d been eating at for too many years, never trying the myriad of different cuisines one button-click away.

I got why they tried to do it, tried to tell that story on the screen: they probably loved the material as much as I had. There might have been a little too much hubris there, in the idea that they could do the story justice. Or, in their defense, they just wanted people to be aware of the book, and swim with a different school of fishes, though the world Donna Tartt had created was too big, and ironically, too small to portray in any kind of satisfying way in a two-hour film. There was simply too much detail that needed to be relayed. Too many things that led to other things that were left unspoken, that mattered none-the-less, and in big ways — incalculable ways, to be more exact. All the things that I thought were boring, and insignificant when I had first started reading, ended up mattering more than I thought possible. They were like just like those “little things” in life that we don’t give much attention to, that bore us to the point that we don’t notice them, and at the end of the day, end up shaping our lives. A film could never accomplish that.

But really, to me, that was what the book was about.  

Different Opinion? Comment Below.