One moment, one decision, can affect your whole life.
Published: 2013
Genre: Coming of Age, Crime
CW: Drug Use/Abuse, Death of Parent, Suicidal Thoughts, Alcoholism, Child Abuse, Racial Slurs
★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Thirteen-year-old Theo Decker is one of the few survivors of a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother. In the ensuing chaos, Theo takes a famous Carel Fabritius painting out of rubble, unaware that this action will lead him into the dangerous world of art crime.
I was first introduced to Donna Tartt in my second year of university, when I discovered how popular she was in the online bookish community. People would tell me how complex her characters were, how thought-provoking her prose was, and I was immediately intrigued but too intimidated by the length of her novels to rush into reading them. I finally worked up the courage in January 2022 to read her debut novel, The Secret History, which follows a group of classics students who get caught in a web of secrets and murder. After so many years of hearing the internet butter up Tartt's writing, to my disappointment, I ended up hating the novel. The chapters were excruciating long with no page breaks, half of the main characters felt underdeveloped, and the plot contained several cliches you would expect from a first time author trying to make their debut as edgy as possible (e.g., two of the classics students are a brother and sister twin duo; three guesses as to what Tartt decided their big secret would be).
A part of me hoped this was just due to Tartt being a less experienced writer at the time of the book's release. So, I decided to give her a second chance and read her third published novel, The Goldfinch. And my god, were the improvements noticeable. Despite being almost twice as long as Tartt's debut, The Goldfinch was almost breezy to get through, thanks to the chapters being broken into smaller sections. And I found that Tartt's semi-philosophical prose worked more efficiently in a novel that was more of a character study than a plot heavy thriller. Every character, no matter how small their role, felt more fleshed out and real than those in The Secret History, especially the female characters.
Early in the novel, Theo notices a girl around his age named Pippa visiting the Met with her grandfather; she is the only other survivor of the bombing that he knows, which causes him to form an obsession with her that he's convinced means she's the love of his life. In this way, Pippa plays a similar role to Camilla Macauley, the main female character in The Secret History. Both women are objects of the male protagonists' infatuation, yet hold rich inner lives that the protagonists don't concern themselves with. Unlike with Camilla, however, the reader actually gets to see Pippa's life outside of Theo—her injuries and trauma after the bombing result in her getting addicted to morphine and being sent to a school for "troubled girls"—and we understand why these two feel a connection: they both survived the same traumatic event and have no one else to bond with about it. Rather than just being "the girl that got away," Pippa becomes a mirror to Theo. While he uses his trauma as an excuse to pursue worse and worse life choices, she learns to confront her trauma and grow from it as a person.
Now, I've spent a good portion of this review comparing The Goldfinch to The Secret History because while reading the novel, I noticed that most of the reasons I found myself enjoying the story were because I preferred its execution to the previous Tartt novel I read. Which then lead me to wonder what I'm sure most of you are thinking right now: what did I think of the novel as its own entity? Well, I did thoroughly enjoy the story and was incredibly invested in the characters, but I'd be lying if I said I had no problems with it. I mentioned earlier that I appreciated that the chapters in the novel, though still long, were broken into smaller sections; however, Tartt formats these sections as mini chapters within the larger chapter, and these mini chapters are often short scenes that end abruptly. I found this less distracting the further I got into the novel, but it definitely made for a choppy read at the start.
I also mentioned that the story is more of a character study, focusing on Theo's life in the aftermath of the bombing. While I'm the sort of person who enjoys character driven stories, Tartt falls into the same trap that many authors do: forcing a major conflict into the plot right at the end. In the final two chapters, Theo learns that his childhood friend (and crush) Boris stole the Fabritius painting from Theo's bedroom when they were teenagers and sold it to the black market. The two men then travel to Amsterdam to retrieve the painting from the mob, which results in a shootout they barely escape from. And as Theo spends a week recuperating in a hotel, waiting to hear what their next step will be, Boris . . . solves the entire conflict off page.
This isn't the first time a potential conflict arises in the story only to be anticlimactically taken care of. Shortly after the bombing, Theo is worried about getting put into the foster system, but is instead taken in by a classmate's family until his deadbeat dad shows up to take him to Las Vegas. Later, when running away to New York, Theo is caught sneaking his dog onto the bus, but the driver decides not to make a big deal about it. I can't help but wonder why Tartt would bother bringing up these conflicts (particularly the one in the finale) if she wasn't going somewhere with them. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if this issue was the result of needing to cut her wordcount down, considering the novel is nearly 900 pages long.
I can at least say that reading this book has given me a better understanding of why Tartt is such a beloved author to many readers. While I wouldn't consider this the masterpiece it was pitched to me as, I'd be happy to revisit it someday and even try reading more of Tartt's work in the future, especially if she ever gets around to publishing a fourth novel. Considering how contrary my opinions about popular authors tend to be, however, I wouldn't be surprised if The Little Friend, her second and least talked about novel, is the one that I end up loving.