The Goldfinch - Why Do I Still Hate This Novel So Damn Much?

I wish I could understand the visceral negative reaction I had to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch when I read it back in December 2013 because to this day I still despise everything about that reading experience - and if I understood why that is, I would be able to avoid anything like that ever happening to me again.  The book, which went on to win the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was already a darling of the critics in late 2013 so I expected to really enjoy it and even forked out for the hardcover version.  In fact, I was already a fan of Tartt's writing, having enjoyed both The Secret History back in 1993 and The Little Friend in 2004.  But something went terribly wrong this time and I had to force myself to return to The Goldfinch enough times to finish it. 

And after I finally turned its last page with a big sigh of relief, I decided not to review the book because I couldn't stand the thought of spending any more time with its characters in my head.  I can only even find one ever mention of it on Book Chase, and that was only to include it in a post I did about twenty-first century Pulitzer Prize winners in early 2015. Even then, I couldn't force myself to say much about the book although my aversion to it is obvious:

"Novel with one of the weakest and most unlikable main characters I have encountered in years, this is my least favorite of the twenty-first century's winners.  Frankly, I found its message to be a worthy one, but one that was so pretentiously delivered (especially the novel's last few pages) that, in the long run, I regretted wasting reading time on it."

All I can figure is that the main character and his buddy repulsed me so completely by their enthusiastic embrace of the drug culture that I didn't want to spend any time with them there - even via the pages of a book.  I found them so weak and so willing to throw their lives away - and to destroy the lives of others in the process - that I could find not one empathetic bone in my body for them.  It got so bad that I would have preferred the author just to kill them off and shorten the novel by fifty pages or so, even more if that were possible.

The reason I'm writing this is that I just stumbled upon the trailer for a movie version of The Goldfinch that is apparently being released this September.  I watched the trailer out of curiosity, and all those negative feelings about the book immediately came back to me.  So let's just say that I'm not going to make the same mistake with the movie that I made with the book.

I always find it difficult to give an answer when someone asks me what my favorite book of all time is because I've enjoyed too many great reading experiences over the years to be able to choose just one - or ten.  But if anyone ever asks me which book, of the several thousand I've read, that I hate the most, I know exactly what title will pop into my head before they finish asking the question.  So there's that.

Here's a link to that 2015 Pulitzer Prize post in which I first forced myself to write something about The Goldfinch.