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Tuesday, January 7, 2014
by Liz Smith
“IT is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.”
Obsessive readers will recognize that the above PR quote on the book jacket means that Donna Tartt’s massive novel “The Goldfinch” is a big, big hit. It follows her best-selling “The Secret History” and “The Little Friend,” which were translated into 30 languages.
I would suggest when you see Tartt’s name, you not read further. Don’t try to understand anything about “The Goldfinch.” Just pay your money to Little, Brown and order it for some form of a “reader” because if you don’t like to hold a heavy book, you might not be encouraged to read this one.
And, I am encouraging you. I read it in real book form and I don’t regret a moment of it; not even when I wondered why the editors weren’t telling the Mississippi-born writer to “get on with it.” But I’m not going to say anything about the novel’s story; other than that it must be the kind of thing that people in England and all over the world waited for from week to week when Charles Dickens was keeping them enthralled with weekly sections of his great literature.
You will never forget reading this, even when it exasperates you with the “hero” and his problems. It has everything — a terror attack, an orphan, rich people in New York, great art, unrequited love, drugs, the works. Just take my word for it! I have seldom been so obsessed by a written work, both exasperated by it, not always understanding it, plunging on, being rewarded.
No wonder my pals down at The Strand Bookstore on 13th Street in the East Village had a record sale of books over the holidays; their biggest in over 80 years. “Books are not dead!” say the owners. Just drop down there for entertainment one of these days. Treasures galore and a lot of books out on the street for sale or giveaway. This bears out my theory that real-life books will keep being printed and will become collector’s items.
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