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.

Vintage Editions - When Jig Saw Puzzles and Books Collide

I don't think I've mentioned on the blog before, but building 1000-to-2000 piece jigsaw puzzles is something I really enjoy doing when I'm not in the mood for reading.  And every once in a while, the two hobbies even meet head on like they did with this particular puzzle from the White Mountain puzzle people.

This one was a whole lot of fun because I so clearly remember reading many of these "vintage" books in exactly these editions.  

(Unfortunately, I've had to put aside jigsaw puzzles for the moment because I have cataracts on both eyes that have started making it difficult for me to judge accurately the different color tones in these puzzles pieces- a problem that has literally doubled the length of time it takes me to build a puzzle, and even more importantly, the frustration level involved in building them.  But surgery is scheduled for June 26 and July 17, so I'm hoping that things are much better soon so that I can share a few more of my favorites here.)

Do click on the photo for a better look at the puzzle.

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World - C.A. Fletcher

There is so much I want to tell you about this book – but I can’t do it because I’ve been asked not to by someone important, the author, who took the time to lead things off with a special “note on spoilers” in which he says this:

            “It’d be a kindness to other readers – not to say this author – if the discoveries made as you follow Griff’s journey into the ruins of our world remained a bit of a secret between us…”

So, I’m extra carefully walking a fine line on this review – but the things I wish I could tell you are right there on the tip of my tongue. That’s how excited I am about this book and how badly I want to see it get into the hands of thousands and thousands of readers.  

Let’s start with the fact that a while back, almost the entire human race lost the ability to reproduce itself, meaning that the Earth’s population has dropped from its peak of 7.5 billion down to less than 9,000 people. Think about that.  9,000 people spread over the Earth’s surface means that surviving families (those over the generations who have mysteriously retained the ability to reproduce) can go an entire lifetime only ever running into a very few people not part of their own family or small group.  And when those strangers show up, it is not always a good thing for the ones being visited.

This is precisely why Griz’s family lives on an island capable of providing everything it needs to sustain life.  Griz describes it this way: “My childhood wasn’t like yours. I’ve never had friends, and in my whole life, I’ve not met enough people to play a game of football.”  All Griz has are his family and his precious dogs.  (Even most of the dogs still around are not able to reproduce themselves, so dogs are a very precious commodity in Griz’s world.)

Author C. A. Fletcher and His Dog

Then one day Griz spots a boat with bright red sails moving toward the island, a boat carrying the stranger who will forever change Griz’s life and, for that matter, his whole world.  After the man steals one of Griz’s two dogs, Griz will know him only as a thief of the worst order.  And the chase is on, because according to Griz, “…there may be no law except what you make of it.  But if you steal my dog, you can at least expect me to come after you.  Because if we’re not loyal to the things we love, what’s the point?”

What Griz discovers about the world when he makes it to the mainland for the first time in his life will astound the reader just as much as it astounds Griz.  A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World is really the story of a boy on a quest to get back what is his, but it is what happens to Griz along the way that makes this novel so memorable.  And as for those spoilers, let’s just say that you will know them when they jump off the page at you, and that you will understand the author’s urgent request to keep them to yourself. I can’t think of a book more easily spoiled than this one, because…well, I just can’t tell you that.

Read this book, everyone.  You can thank me later.

(C. A. Fletcher is a Scottish author, and this is my first exposure to his work. I’m hoping there’s a lot more from Fletcher out there because if A Boy and His Dog is any indication, the man has a wonderful imagination.)

Hunter's Moon - Philip Caputo

A Philip Caputo novel can always be counted on as an opportunity to get deeply inside the heads of some interesting fictional characters, a chance to remind ourselves about what makes people in the real world - including ourselves - tick. Even though some readers may still want to quibble over whether or not Hunter’s Moon is a novel or a collection of short stories despite the fact that the book explicitly labels itself "a novel in stories," there is definitely plenty to learn about human nature in Caputo's latest.

All but one of the book’s seven interconnected, chronologically-ordered stories are set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the exception being the one that takes place in a remote part of Alaska.  Oddly enough, placing one of the stories in the wilds of Alaska makes clear just how remote and wild the Upper Peninsula itself is, and why so many of the damaged souls in Caputo’s stories find some kind of comfort there.  Caputo describes northern Michigan so well that the Upper Peninsula in a way becomes the character that binds his stories together; it is the one constant between six of them and a first cousin to the Alaskan setting of the seventh.  

Author Philip Caputo

These are stories about men and women who are not quite managing to live the lives they had expected for themselves, and their disappointment shows. They include stories about a man struggling to keep a second marriage alive despite his personal demons; a father who really, really dislikes his young adult son; a son who equally dislikes his 85-year-old father with whom he can’t remember ever getting along; and others about people trying to cope with a shared act of sudden violence that forever changed their lives for the worst.  

This being a Philip Caputo book, many of its central characters are veterans of America’s recent wars, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, and what they experienced in those wars is something they still think about every day of their lives. This is particularly true of the poignant story that closes the book, one in which a young veteran struggles to cope with the guilt that he brought home from the war with him, but it is also a theme that occurs in several of the other stories.  Even the collection's most prominent character is largely defined by what he experienced in Vietnam decades earlier.  

Hunter’s Moon is vintage Philip Caputo; his fans and longtime readers will not be disappointed.

Copy provided for review purposes by Henry Holt & Company

The World Before E-Books

Remember the old days, when there were still some people who had not yet heard of e-books and e-readers?  Well, sometimes I miss those days.

See the comments below for further discussion of this topic:

Calypso - David Sedaris

David Sedaris is one of those guys whose books I’ve seen around for what seems ages without ever picking up one of them.  Don’t ask me why that is, because I don’t really have a good answer; it just seems to happen like that sometimes.  And then I spotted the strange little smiley-face on the dustjacket of Calypso in a bookstore one day, and I picked the book up to look inside.  Let’s just say, that I’m glad that I did because now I know what I’ve been missing.

Calypso is a collection of, if I counted correctly, twenty-one glimpses into the world and lifestyle of David Sedaris. Sedaris is known for his comedy, but these stories are as likely to bring a tear to the reader’s eye as they are to make him laugh – and there is a lot of both going on here.  I have no basis upon which to compare Calypso to any previous David Sedaris books, but I can tell you that this time around the man is looking at his life through the lens of middle age and he’s not particularly thrilled by what he sees. 

 But the real beauty of Calypso is the author’s willingness to reveal so much about his personal life, as well as those of his parents and siblings, that even a first-time reader like me comes away from the book feeling as if I’ve been reading Sedaris for years.  Right from the first page the reader is tipped that Sedaris may not look at life quite the way that the rest of us do when he says: “Though there’s an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age. The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you’ll acquire a guest room.” There was no way I could quit reading after that opening because I could not imagine the connection between “middle age perk” and “guest room.”

David Sedaris

Along the way, there are personal stories about the suicide of Sedaris’s youngest sister; about his total addiction to the Fit-Bit watch routine; not being able to talk comfortably with his father at any point in his life; his mixed reaction to the legalization of gay marriage; his mother’s alcoholism; and his father’s insistence at unnecessarily scrimping and saving even at age 94.  And if that were not already enough, there are also stories about the author’s really strange relationship with a huge, deformed snapping turtle, the shopping gene he shares with his sisters, and what can happen to a man suffering a severe stomach virus attack while on stage in front of a whole bunch of people.  And that’s not all.  In other words, nothing is off limits in Calypso- and it all works.

If you are already a David Sedaris fan, you already know all of this; but it you are not, it’s not too late to become one.  

Book Number 3,401