First Impressions: "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt

I've been looking forward to reading The Goldfinch ever since it came out. It sat, neglected, on my Kindle for months while I worked on my own book. I'm still working on that book, but I finally decided to dive into the book that won this year's Pulitzer Prize for literature.

As soon as I started reading, I realized I was going to have to start writing stuff down. Not because I was loving it, but because I was confused. That's the word that sums up my experience of this book so far: confusion.

I loved The Secret History. I haven't read The Little Friend. Those are the only other books Tartt has published, so there's not a heck of a lot of room for comparison. I immediately got sucked into the deep sense of mystery and foreboding in The Secret History. It opens with a murder, for heaven's sake. The Goldfinch doesn't. It's....difficult, and not in a good way. I'm still reading the book. But I started digging through reviews to see if other people were having the same WTF moments I'm having.

Let's take a look at some of those moments.

1. Problematic narrative voice. The narrator of The Goldfinch is a 13-year-old boy named Theo. Well, not really...it's actually an older Theo, looking back on his life from a hotel room in Amsterdam. We have no idea how old he actually is when he's telling the story. He says he is too afraid to "telephone" anyone in Amsterdam, which is not something anyone under 25 would say (probably under 35). This made me think he's an old man now, or at least a middle-aged one.

Well, that theory worked until the narrator threw in a reference to a Jet Li movie that came out in 2005. This was in a flashback, so the narrator could have been anywhere between, say, 10 and 13 when that incident occurred. This means the narrator is probably in his very early 20s. I've seen reviews that say he's 23 as well as 27...apparently I'm not the only one having this problem. The other alternative is that he's telling his story from the future, in 2020 or something, thus accounting for the older feel of the narrative voice.

Some readers won't care. They can just go with it. I can't. Why? Because this narrative voice is old. Antiquated, almost. The sentence structure and word choice are difficult to believe as the product of a 20-something mind, even one who was educated at a posh Upper East Side private school. So either there's a huge disconnect between the voice Tartt chose and the character she chose to embody that voice, or the book isn't supposed to be remotely realistic and we're just supposed to go with it and screw everything else.

Why does this bother me so much? Because the story starts when Theo is 13, but so few of his thoughts and impressions ring true as those of a 13-year-old boy. The vocabulary and style alone rule that out. The voice is also asexual, which I'm pretty sure isn't a defining characteristic of most 13-year-olds. It's constantly jarring to be reminded that Theo is 13, when the impressions, phrasing, and descriptions he provides are those of a middle-aged man.

Here are a few examples:

"...it was upsetting him so."
Do you know a 13-year-old boy who would talk like this? I don't.

"...a chill wind of unreason blew over me."
Again, do you know a 13-year-old boy who talks like this?

"Everything came alive in her company; she cast a charmed theatrical light."
Unless we're in a weird reverse Oedipal scenario, I'm not sure most 13-year-old boys would describe their mothers this way.

"His voice was very faint, very scratchy, very cordial, with a ghastly pulmonary whistle."
Do you know a 13-year-old who uses the words "ghastly" and "pulmonary" on a regular basis?

I'm instantly reminded of that moment in 10 Things I Hate about You where Michael drops a bit of Shakespearean dialogue ("Sweet love, renew thy force!") and Patrick says, "Hey man, don't say shit like that to me. People can hear you." Teenagers are the ultimate bullshit detectors for language.

That being the case, why did Tartt need the framing device at the beginning of the book? Why not let us experience Theo's adventures in real time, with the eyes and voice of a real 13-year-old? I'd care more about a boy's trauma if it weren't described in the dry, pontificating voice of some old guy. Plus, to me, it would mean more to show Theo progressing through the life events that help him arrive at the book's ultimate meaning (something about art being the only thing that lasts) than to start the book as Tartt does by telling us, "Hey guys, I'm old and jaded now, but there's a meaning to this story. In 700 pages, I'll tell you what it is. You're cool with that, right?"

Interestingly, the narrative voice is what the Washington Post's Corinna Lothar praised about the book. Here's what she had to say: "Permanently damaged and scarred by the explosion and the death of his mother, the voice of the traumatized youth and the cynical, self-involved adult is ingenuous and startling."

So far, I disagree. But I'm willing to keep going.

2. Clunky sentences. On a sentence-by-sentence level, I'm having problems. My inner editor wants to cut out words and phrases in nearly every other sentence. Tartt has a Pulitzer. Clearly, she knows an assload more than I do about how to write good fiction. Still...I'm actually cringing at some of these sentences. Here are just a few, all from Chapter 1, Section V:

"The boys muttered, audibly."
This made me stop. Does the word "muttering" mean that muttered words are generally inaudible, requiring the adverb to clarify that they were? If so, doesn't that mean "muttering" isn't the right word for what the boys are doing? On the other hand, if mutterings are generally audible, why add the redundant adverb? Something's not right here.

"I had made it over to where he was when--unexpectedly fast--he shot out his dust-whitened arm and grabbed my hand."
Wouldn't "suddenly" convey the same thing as the clunky "unexpectedly fast"? For that matter, why is clarification even needed? "Shot out" pretty much implies a sharp, quick action. This whole construction is a bit janky.

"For a moment I wasn't sure; I listened, hard; and then it spieled off again: faint and draggy, a little weird."
The semicolons. Make them stop. And if the narrator can come up with a verb like "spiel" to describe the motion of a sound, "a little weird" rings false. Either get rid of "spieled" or "a little weird." I'm not buying both of them in the same sentence.

"Often, in the afternoons, perfume-smelling women with shopping bags dropped by for coffee and tea..."
Hold up. The way this sentence is constructed, it sounds like the women are professional perfume smellers. If they smelled of perfume, it should have said "women smelling of perfume with shopping bags." I'm so confused. Why is a bad construction like this there? Is this some form of characterization? Or in a book that's more than 700 pages, did no one take the time to fix small things like this?

There are also an assload of -ly adverbs ("audibly," "unexpectedly," "fretfully," "thickly," limply," "awkwardly," "fearfully," etc.). Giving Tartt the benefit of the doubt, maybe these are meant to convey a lack of sophistication appropriate for a 13-year-old narrator. But then why does the overall tone still feel so old? Like I said, I'm confused.

3. Drag-ass scenes. This is a slow-moving book with zero narrative tension (yet). It's not a spoiler alert to tell you that there's an explosion at the Met that happens while Theo and his mother visit (this happens in the very first chapter). The aftermath of the explosion takes freakin' forever (at least 50 pages). Theo wanders and wanders and wanders and describes bodies and his perambulations through the wreckage like he's getting paid by the word (maybe that's what people mean by saying this novel is Dickensian?). Each time Theo clambers over another piece of wreckage or accidentally touches a body, the description is repetitive to the point of being sleep-inducing. You'd think a scene like this would be tense or fraught with peril. Nope. I understand that this is a literary novel, but so far, if this book were left behind in a time capsule, future generations would think literary novels and page-turners were mutually exclusive. That's a shame, since Tartt's own The Secret History proves that wrong.

4. Strange editing choices. This is nitpicking, I know, I know. This doesn't have an effect on the overall power of the story. It just makes me wonder about the production value when I see the phrase "middle-school kids" (note the hyphenated multi-word adjective) and "non working phone" (note the non-hyphenated multi-word adjective) in the same chapter. This is the curse of being a writer and an editor and a reader. I can't turn off other parts of me when it's time to read for fun. If I saw this in one of my books, I'd fix it. Similarly, internal dialogue is sometimes italicized, sometimes put in quotation marks, and sometimes not. I'm still confused.

5. General weirdness. After the explosion in the museum, Theo sees a dead woman and notes her fake tan. How does he know it's fake? Because she's dead and still has "a healthy apricot glow." Now, this made me stop and go, huh? How does a 13-year-old kid know whether freshly dead bodies (we're talking minutes) lose their natural tan? Do they? Heck, I don't know. Maybe Theo's right and dead people instantly lose any natural tan they have. But that detail felt wrong. It pulled me out of the story and made me want to research what happens to dead people's tans. It made me think of all those episodes of CSI: Miami where they find dead girls on the beach (Were they still tan? Shit, why can't I remember?). I shouldn't be thinking these things. I should be thinking about Theo and wondering what happens to him next. Nope. Furthest thing from my mind.

Interestingly, there's a huge literary kerfuffle over this book and its literary worthiness. Apparently, you're either a big fan of the book's Dickensian reach and ability to touch the heart (Michiko Kakutani, Stephen King) or you think it's clunky, poorly written, and full of cliches (James Wood, Francine Prose, Lorin Stein). You can read more about that debate here, in a Vanity Fair article.

Personally, I don't give a shit about literary merit and whether the book is "serious" enough to deserve all its praise. All I care about is understanding why so many folks like it, and why I'm having such a hard time with it. I'll report back when I'm further through and give a final verdict.

Book Review: A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan

Okay, so I don't normally read much that's classified as "literary," let alone books that win major prizes such as a Pulitzer.  But I snagged a copy of this book at a library book sale and decided to give it a try.

Good thing.

You guys, this book is fantastic.  I read a lot of the reviews on Goodreads *after* I'd finished, to see if my reaction compared to others.  I found a mixed bag there, with people either loving it or not seeing what all the fuss was about.  I'm in the loving it category, with two caveats that I'll list below. 

The book is more than a collection of related short stories, yet not quite a traditional novel.  This throws a lot of people who want a linear narrative with one main narrator or perspective.  You don't get that here.  But if you can let your mind unwind, go with the flow, and let the different settings and years and characters wash over you, you'll get the same effect.  These are people you come to know in stages, as they age and do things that reshape their lives for better or for worse.  Just like a linear narrative, you learn the characters' histories, their presents, their pasts, their quirks, and why their relationships succeeded or failed.  But it's not gonna happen in the way a linear mind wants it to happen.  If you can't get past this, you probably won't enjoy the book.

There was a lot of chatter on Goodreads about the chapter that's presented as a PowerPoint presentation.  Some people loved it.  A lot more of them didn't.  I'm going to say that I loved it because it worked.  The chapter is written from the perspective of a young girl, a daughter of one of the main characters.  In a tech-savvy sound-bite kind of world, it makes total sense that a young girl would keep a diary that's in the style of a presentation--shapes, dialogue boxes, diagrams.  These convey thoughts as well or better than Twitter posts or Tumblr reposts, with the added bonus of giving you something interesting to look at on the page.  As a writer, this is also a fabulous exercise in finding out how little you need to convey thought and emotion.  Do you really need 250 words on a page?  Or do you need five shape shapes, captions, and a slide title?  Can you make this medium tell a story about a family?  Can you make a little girl's confusion at seeing her parents' sometimes strong-sometimes weak marriage played out as a drama in front of her?  Guess what.  You can.   

If you can adapt to the slightly postmodern construction of the book, there's a lot you'll be rewarded with.  Here are a few of those things:

1.  Good writing.  This sounds obvious for a book that's won a Pulitzer, but two years in grad school taught me that books in the canon (deemed worthy of being taught) can really suck.  Good writing is not a prerequisite.  However, what you get here is writing that rings true.  That's the best way I can think of to describe it.  It's simple, too, without the overwrought ten-line descriptions of things that really should be boiled down to one.  Here's an example:

In high school you'd get in fights when you felt like this, but no one will fight with you now--the fact that you hacked open your wrists with a box cutter three months ago and nearly bled to death seems to be a deterrent.  It functions like a force field, paralyzing everyone in range with an encouraging smile on their lips.  You want to hold up a mirror and ask:  How exactly are those smiles supposed to help me? (p 187-88) 

2.  Interesting characters.  Will you like them all?  No.  Will you understand them all?  No.  Do you want to know what happens to them?  Yes.  I don't like Sasha (a kleptomaniac), one of the main characters.  She's kind of a bitch.  I don't like Bennie (an aging music producer), another of the main characters.  He's also a bitch.  But that doesn't stop me from wanting to read about them, oddly enough.  I'm interested in the way these people interact with each other and the world around them.  I like the way the other characters see their flaws and weaknesses.  I'm not sure if Egan designed it this way, but when other characters see their flaws, you feel justified in having felt the same.

3.  Moments that make you want to shake the characters and scream at them to do or not do something.  If you can get through the chapter titled "Selling the General" without a gasp or a twinge of fear, you're a cold-hearted individual.  This chapter is one of the best examples of literary suspense I've come across.  The thing is, I don't think Egan intended it for it be literary suspense.  It just works out that way because you really really want to see Dolly, Kitty, and Lulu get out of this craziness alive.  Dolly is a washed-up blacklisted former PR agent.  She is hired to do PR for an African dictator with a really bad human rights reputation.  Kitty is a fading starlet, already past her prime but still in her 20s.  Lulu is Dolly's young daughter.  The three of them go to Africa to try and rehabilitate the general's reputation, with hilarious and disastrous consequences. I dare you to not finish this chapter in one sitting.

4.  A sense of time as something that's carrying us further from who and where we want to be--not closer to these things.  There's a heavy-handed quote in the book that explains the title, calling time a "goon squad."  Hence the title of the book.  I don't think this particular quote works, but the message behind it does.  All of the characters in this book had dreams and aspirations that don't quite work out.  People die, go away, move, get left behind....and the people still standing look at each other and wonder why it wasn't them who got left behind.  There's a beautiful ache here inside the characters who know where they are, but still don't really know how or why they're there.  

This being said, there are also a couple of major flaws in the book that take away from its power, message, and charm.  If you're aware of them, you can get over them.  They are:

1.  The first chapter.  The character you meet first, Sasha, works as the assistant to Bennie Salazar, an aging but talented music producer.  She's also a klepto.  The chapter opens with her recapping what her shrink says about her problem and the supposed progress she's made.  Then we go with her on a date.  She steals something (two things actually), and tries to explain them away and cover her tracks.  The chapter feels gimmicky, as if the klepto part is meant to be a larger metaphor.  But I feel like I've read things like this too many times--jaded young woman with a psychological problem that covers up a deeper scar on her psyche.  I don't care.  I need something more interesting than a jaded, wounded young woman who isn't very sympathetic--especially as an opening chapter.  For me, it started the book on a bad note because I didn't like Sasha and wondered if all the characters I'd meet would be as lackluster as she appeared in this chapter.  That wasn't the case, of course, but I only figured this out by going *against* my gut and turning the next page and the next page and the next page.

2.  The last chapter.  It's terrible.  I don't know how it got past an editor.  It has such a gimmicky feel.  It only exists to punctuate the book, to bring back names and places, and to hammer home the theme of technology alienating us from our own future as well as our past.  It's clumsy and obvious and made me angry that the book can't finish strongly.  

This chapter recalls events that happened in the first chapter in a forced, unnatural way.  It brings back the guy Sasha went on a date with, Alex, for no real purpose other than creating a sense of unity about the book.  It creates a future with stupidly named scandals ("Bloggescandals") and weird "handsets" that are some combination of cell phone and computer that you can operate with your mind.  I don't get it.  People use these devices to communicate with each other in annoying text-speak ("U hav sum nAms 4 me?") that intelligent people would simply not adopt, if only for its ludicrous mixture of upper and lower case letters ("only Ets chInEs"; "pls wAt 4 me, my bUtiful wyf"). 

The book's culminating event is a concert for a washed-up performer, engineered to be a success through artificial viral marketing.  But somehow, the crowd gathered decides to like the performer for real.  We're told that generations of surveillance and war have made us jaded and we all just want something to believe in.  But the book hasn't been about surveillance and war, and we don't feel the way the characters supposedly do because Egan hasn't written about the future until now.  It's supposed to be a moment of hope, but it's a moment that feels false.  Unfortunately, the acidic taste of chemical sweetener (rather than real sugar) is what you end with.  Those chemicals sting and linger in your throat.  They are the last thing you remember about the book, which is a shame.          

Overall, though, I highly recommend the book.  Be aware of the gimmicks, but don't let them overpower what's good about this book.  It's beautiful, ambitious, powerful, and yes, flawed...but aren't we all?