Page 11 - books

Guest Review from fellow Australia Times contributor Vicky Smith
the goldfinch

Donna Tartt

It took 11 years to write The Goldfnch, because, according to
author Donna Tartt, “it’s a long book”. This seems to be the only
thing that critics can agree on.
There was always going to be incredible hype around the
release of Tartt’s long-awaited third novel, following the com-
mercial and critical successes of The Secret History in 1992 and
The Little Friend in 2002.
Nothing seems to inspire or incense critics more than making
them wait a decade to review your next work. Lauded by
some as a ‘rarity’, and denounced by others as a long-winded
turkey; a monotonous Harry Potter homage, the work ce-
mented its place as a Modern American Novel by winning the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last month, and is nominated for the
BAILEYS Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize).
This is not a novel that eases the reader in gently. The Gold-
fnch opens with the death of Theo Decker’s mother in a ter-
rorist attack on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tartt creates
a compelling sketch of the relationship between Theo and his these opening scenes – nostalgic traces of his mother, periods
mother, a relationship that is unusual close and complicit, only to of delirium and confusion, a fxation on beauty – become the
destroy it devastatingly a few pages later. defning feature of the work.
The attack is, of course, life-changing for Theo, but not just in The Goldfnch’s aesthetic beauty takes on a spiritual signifcance
the loss of his mother. At the moment of the attack his life be- and forms the grounding for Tartt’s larger study of idolatry, of
comes fundamentally bound to the people and things around both people and objects. Her prose, always sharp and de-
him in the gallery: Welty, an elderly antiques dealer, and a tiny tailed, lends itself well to this subject matter. The reader is
luminous painting - The Goldfnch. As we follow Theo through a left with the impression of many beautiful surfaces, not only
series of wildly diferent guardians into adulthood, echoes of of the various artworks and antiquities with which the novel is

Indipendent Media Inspiring Minds 11