This writer and book are what one reads to enjoy the craft of writing, as confirmed by Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Goldfinch. Her descriptions are what catch my attention, along with her encyclopedic knowledge of furniture restoration, New York City, the art world (and what to do with a famous painting that one walks away with) and the dark shadows of alcohol and opioid dependency that drapes the directionless protagonist, Theo Decker, as he struggles through his teen years and early twenties, trying to find meaning and get on with his life after his mother is killed by a terrorist bombing of an art museum which Theo somehow survived but nevertheless carries with him through claustrophobia and anxiety when he is unable to avoid small spaces or large crowds. Tartt does not seem to be trying quite so hard to sound encyclopedic, though, as she did in her first novel, The Secret History, published in 1992. The result is a greater smoothness in her work:
Individual pedestrians floating up strangely isolated and lonely before my eyes, blank faces plugged into earbuds and staring straight ahead, lips moving silently, and the city noise dampened and deafened, under crushing, granite-colored skies that muffled the noise from the street, garbage and newsprint, concrete and drizzle, a dirty winter grayness weighing like stone.
Page after page of wonderful prose—Tartt’s novels are monstrously large, with The Goldfinch clocking in at 771 pages—but unlike the time I spent slogging through Middlemarch, reading The Goldfinch has been the literary equivalent to me of enjoying a Toblerone chocolate bar, though a good reading lamp, plush chair, cup of quality coffee, and the abandonment of everything digital are all I bring when I escape from the push of daily tasks and settle in to enjoy Tartt’s writing, the final 250 pages of which still await me.
Christian Overtones 