The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's Solid Gold Novel

 

 

 

It's been called "dazzling, rapturous, and symphonic," (Michiko Kakutani in the "New York Times") so where do I go from there?  For me, "The Goldfinch," will likely be the standard by which I measure every other book that I read this year. And that hardly seems fair since this is such an imaginative, over-the-top novel that it defies categorizing.

 

Readers seem to either rhapsodize or sling insults at "The Goldfinch." I understand that not all of you will be willing to put in the time needed to absorb this 800-page behemoth but, if you're the type of reader who wants to be snatched by the hand and drawn into a magical world that won't let you go, then you must wait your turn in line at the library or go out and plunk down the money right now. I think I broke a personal record by burning through it in a week.

 

I cannot, will not, simply outline the story for you. How could any reviewer do that with a novel so overflowing with themes of loss, memory, beauty, love, perception, and friendship. What I will tell you is that Theo Decker is a character I could have spent time with forever. I never tired of his voice, from the precocious 13-year old to the 30-something adult.

 

But, to set the stage, I will explain that Theo and his mother become separated while perusing an exhibit of Dutch paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, all because he has become entranced by a wraith like redhead and failed to follow his mom into the museum shop. There is a sudden, violent explosion and then there is darkness. A dazed and confused Theo awakens later to find that only he and one other person, gravely injured, are conscious and have been overlooked by rescuers. Theo sits by Welty, listening to his dying ramblings and the trajectory of Theo's life, from that moment, is forever altered.

 

The canvas of the painting, "The Goldfinch," lies unscathed in the rubble. With his dying breath the old gentleman seems to be telling Theo to take it, to save it, perhaps? I don't know that Ms. Tartt ever really answers that question. She will leave you asking many more before she is through with this tour-de-force of storytelling. This painting of the tiny bird chained to its perch will inform every action, no matter how self-destructive, that Theo takes for the next twenty years.

 

There have been a few justified critiques of the novel that involve the editing. I'll admit that Theo's sojourn in Las Vegas with his dead-beat dad and Xandra, a sad, sorry excuse for a step-mother, went on way too long. But during that time, Theo meets Boris, a wildly off-the-charts character who will loom large, on and off, in Theo's life. Their unlikely friendship is exquisitely drawn with all of the teen-age angst and homosexual overtones that lurk under the surface of two boys who spend every waking moment together.

 

Another glorious character is Mr. Hobart, Welty's partner in the furniture restoration business, who takes Theo in, rescuing him from New York's child protection services, hilariously sent up in the guise of two social workers who spout outrageous platitudes to the newly motherless boy. Hobie's goodness is an oasis for Theo and the place where he learns the fine art of restoration, of furniture and of the soul.

 

The beauty of Donna Tartt's latest novel is that it can be read on several levels. It's thoroughly enjoyable as a Dickensian romp, as Stephen King referred to it in his own review in the Times, or it can be parsed as a treatise on beauty, art, and the ownership of it. You know, what good is a painting is it sits in some collector's vault? Isn't art meant to be shared with the world? I think that it is, so I thank Donna Tartt for working on this novel for the last ten years and finally sharing it with the world.

Anna Quindlen's Still Life with Bread Crumbs

On Thursday afternoon thirty-six men and women arrived at the South County Regional Library eager to talk about Rachel Joyce's heart-rending debut novel, "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry." I felt right at home, among old friends and new, as I slid back into my role as facilitator, doing what I always did best as a librarian, sharing my love for the written word. I realized, as we discussed the afternoon away, how desperate we readers are for kind authors. Rachel Joyce is one, Anna Quindlen is another.




I have been following Ms. Quindlen since her Pulitzer Prize winning days as a journalist. I don't miss any of her books. Should I explain what I mean by a kind author? I love a writer who cares enough about the characters he or she creates that he'll allow them to struggle through the dips in life, as we all must, but still arrive at the end of the tunnel with some hope for the future. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I believe I've outgrown my penchant for the persistent dark side.

Harold Fry was one such character. Rebecca Winter is another. At sixty-one, her once brilliant career apparently ebbing, no longer able to take the balance in her check book for granted, the renowned photographer suddenly finds herself among the so-called sandwich generation. Her mother's stay in assisted living is assisted by Rebecca's royalty checks, and her son Ben, though ostensibly on his own, is never averse to a helping hand.

 To stay on top of the bills, Rebecca takes a step considered drastic in her social circle. She rents out her gorgeous Manhattan apartment for a sinful fee and moves upstate to a crumbling cottage in a nowhere town where she can re-evaluate her life and, just maybe, find a new direction for her art.

It's fun to watch Rebecca, the city girl, cope with the raccoons in the attic, the dearth of cell towers and Internet connections, the quiet that opens up the ears to new sounds: a deer startling through the woods, evening owls, the howl of a lonely dog. There are the requisite characters so typical of small towns, each with a back story worthy of exploration, from Sarah who owns the tea shop/scone bakery, to Tad, the lonely clown who makes everyone happy except himself.

And then there's Jim Bates, the catalyst for all that will follow. A sorrowful man, wise beyond his forty-some years, we intuit that he carries a heavy burden which reveals itself over time. He and Rebecca haunt the same woods and ultimately come to know each other through a business deal that Rebecca needs financially and, perhaps, Jim needs emotionally. Together, they sit in a tree stand for days at a time, he tracking bald eagles for a conservation group, she photographing them.

"Still Life with Bread Crumbs" is a novel  full of love, life, and reality, an examination of people who have trouble seeing what's right in front of their eyes because they're so busy looking to the future rather than being, well, still. It's a book about connections almost missed because of pride or prejudice. It's a book that you may find, as I did, you'll read in one sitting, place aside on your table, stare into space, and sigh with pure satisfaction.

Apologies in advance if you don't hear from me for a while. I finally got Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" and am 100 pages in. I'm gobsmacked by the writing and fully expect to be enthralled for the next 700 pages. Thank you for reading.

The Year She Left Us

Tolstoy observed in his classic "Anna Karenina" that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Lately, I have been inundated with stories of unhappy families. I'm afraid that I had to give a less than stellar review to "Pioneer Girl," a forthcoming novel from Bich Minh Nguyen which surprised me with what I felt were too many stereotypes of the Asian-American immigrant family, in this case, Vietnamese. http://bit.ly/1iS7JZb

But then I received an advanced copy of Kathryn Ma's "The Year She Left Us," which will be out in May, and I was delighted.

Yes, Ms. Ma writes of another unhappy family, Chinese-American this time, but the narrative just swept me up. In two days I became acquainted with the Kongs, and though I never fully understood their dynamic, I felt empathy for their struggle. Four strong women, extremely different personalities, mothers and daughters, caught between the present and the past, compete for our ear as alternating chapters reflect the views of each. It's Charlie, younger sister of Les, a California court judge who has difficulty leaving her robes at work, who's the catalyst for the action when she decides to adopt a baby from China.

Charlie is the bleeding heart of the bunch, a single lawyer who works within the court system, specializing in patching broken families back together. Her love for her newly adopted daughter, Ari, is immediate and visceral and her disapproving family soon falls into line. Ari is showered with attention from her doting Aunt Les and her imperious Grandmother Kong, while Charlie does all the right things, following advice books to the tee, never letting Ari forget where she came from. But Charlie is so intent upon being the perfect adoptive mom that she fails to notice that Ari is slipping away from her. After Charlie and Ari travel to China with a large group of American adoptees, visiting the orphanage where Ari had been abandoned as a newborn, Ari begins to spiral completely and inexplicably out of control.

Kathryn Ma manages to take us inside Charlie's suffering as her daughter rejects her, running away, refusing to communicate, in her bid to find herself. Unwanted advice comes from every quarter, especially from Charlie's perfect older sister Les (though she's never raised a child of her own), causing a rift that will take years to heal. But Charlie is no stranger to loss and she's wise enough to know that she can't cage Ari. She courageously allows her daughter the freedom to flounder and, in so doing, learns much about her own strength and that of her inscrutable mother as well.

This is a poignant look at one family, informed by its Chinese culture. It doesn't pretend to speak for all or to generalize. Themes of abandonment, self-loathing, and an inability to assimilate would normally indicate a depressing read, but somehow Ms. Ma's talent lifts this story above the typical dysfunctional family genre to something hopeful and redemptive. Look for it soon.

The Invention of Wings

Sue Monk Kidd's latest novel, "The Invention of Wings," languished on my bedside table for months. I avoided it because I feared, especially after Oprah's imprimatur, that it was just another rehash of "The Help," another tale of a white woman riding in to save black women from themselves. Apologies to Ms. Kidd are in order. http://suemonkkidd.com/

"The Invention of Wings" is a great example of a novel that combines detailed historical research with soaring imaginative flourish. I tend to begin a book at the back, just one of my many little quirks, so I read the author's notes before beginning the book. That's how I discovered the astonishing fact that the Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, are two flesh and blood women who lived in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1800's. Ms. Kidd tells us that she drove by their former home daily yet had never heard of them. (note to women's studies programs)

Two daughters in a huge slave-holding family, Sarah and Angelina, for whatever reason, understood from very young ages that slavery was a vile, despicable means to an economic end for southern plantation owners. Sarah was only eleven years old when her parents "gave" her an extraordinary birthday gift, another human being. Handful, an enslaved child, daughter of Charlotte, the house seamstress, shows up at Sarah's bedroom door with a lavender bow around her neck and her thin, rush pallet under her arm.

Despite what you might read in the advertising campaign for this novel, it is not a fairytale about a friendship between an enslaved child and her mistress. The relationship between Sarah and Handful is much deeper and more complicated than that. Yes, Sarah does teach Handful to read, a skill that  empowers Handful to enact her own salvation, but this is actually the story of the birth of the abolitionist movement in America.

Through alternating chapters of first-person narration, Sarah and Handful speak of their lives over a thirty-five year span. At first the stilted language may be a bit off-putting, at least it was for me, but I soon worked through it as I became embroiled in the lives of these fascinating characters.

Sarah eventually moves to Philadelphia, studying to become a Quaker minister, meeting feminist and abolitionist Lucretia Mott, and honing her writing skills. Angelina follows and the two women travel throughout New England decrying slavery and drawing huge crowds with their message. Handful, through a series of brave-hearted acts of her own, meets Denmark Vesey, a real-life free black man who actually organized a slave rebellion in Charleston around 1822.

Sue Monk Kidd's first best-selling novel, "The Secret Life of Bees," displayed her interest in race and feminism early on. "The Invention of Wings" takes those themes to an entirely new level. After you read this book I know you'll want to learn more about the Grimke family, Mr. Denmark Vesey, and the historic use of quilts by African women who burned to tell their stories.

 Those of you fortunate enough to live in southwest Florida will have the opportunity to meet and talk with Ms. Kidd in March at the free Southwest Florida Reading Festival. Early-bird discounts are now available for An Evening with the Authors event where you can get up close and personal with your favorite writers. Check it out at www.readfest.org.

The Winter of our Lives?

There's a point near the end of novelist Paul Auster's quiet memoir, "Winter Journal," where he beautifully describes waking up in the morning and taking those first tentative steps, placing bare feet on cool, hardwood floors, taking in the joy, the sensuality of the feeling and wondering how many more times a sixty-five year old man will realistically get to savor this experience.

 He does not lament but simply admits that he suspects he is in the winter of his life. As a woman who celebrated sixty-five years herself yesterday, I would like to assure Mr. Auster that statistics say we likely have another twenty years!

In interviews he has said that he is running out of ideas for fiction writing. It's no wonder. The man is probably one of the most prolific, most lauded of our twentieth century American writers who is not a household name. I think that speaks to us as readers and not to his work. I had the pleasure of reviewing his 2010 novel "Sunset Park" for "Library Journal" and had this to say at the time:

 "Auster deftly balances minute details that evoke New York City, post-financial meltdown, with marvelously drawn characters bruised but unbowed by life's vicissitudes. He has an impressive array of literary nominations to his credit, but this should be the novel that brings him a broader readership."
—Sally Bissell, Library Journal, (Starred Review)

I admit that I just love author memoirs so I was predisposed to enjoy "Winter Journal." I listened to the audio version read by the author, something I don't normally recommend. Ironically, writers are not always adept at reading their own books. In this case, Mr. Auster's voice is low and rather monotone, and I found myself often having to turn up the volume. Nevertheless, his reading of such personal material, added to its authenticity.

With a novelist's eye for detail Auster makes his world come alive. Many times I found myself saying, "I remember that!" His boy scout uniform or the scent of the spring air in southern France, driving in a blizzard in Minnesota or the accident with a rental car in Brooklyn, the feel of his wife's skin under the covers in the morning, all of these disparate pleasures and disasters he shares with us as if we are old friends just hanging out.

He transforms the quotidian into events of interest and importance. The nastiness at a family funeral becomes a lesson in self-control. A pick-up softball game with the neighborhood kids becomes an opportunity for his mom to shine. Reading "Winter Journal" made me want to revisit my own languishing memoir with new vigor.

So please, Mr. Auster, don't stop sharing your talent with the world. I plan to go back and read your work from the beginning. Why not? I should have another twenty years in which to do it!