Review of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

What a terrible, self-aggrandizing book this was. The whole time reading it I felt like the author was looking down their horn-rimmed reading glasses at me with a holier-than-thou look, smirking as if to say 'haha, you're FAR too daft to understand this'. And you know what? If the book had even been halfway intelligent, I would have had an easier time of getting through it.

As it stands, this was the most excruciating slog through a novel that I've ever had-- I often felt like the author had just taken an intro to Art History class and wrote the whole thing while observing the 'youths' in university, it was so narratively unbelievable. The rampant casual racism (which I'm sure will be excused with, "But you're not supposed to like that he thinks like that!" as if using racism to make your characters unlikeable is the most fucking ground-breaking thing), the unnecessarily elevated language, the one-dimensional characters, and the complete inability to decide on a tone made this novel just awful. I don't care that it won a Pulitzer, I would honestly rather die than recommend this 700-page-trek to another living being, and I'm seriously considering cussing out the friend who gave it to me in the first place.

The only thing keeping me from lighting this fucking thing on fire is the knowledge that the ozone layer doesn't deserve to be subjected to it, even in molecule form. 1 star only because the story started with promise.

View all my reviews What did you guys think? Have you read it?

Divergent Chapter 14 & 15: This is the first time I have actually felt like flipping a table while reading a book.

The next two chapters are rather short, so I'm recapping the both of them together. Which is a weird thing to say, considering I just split a chapter from City of Ashes in two because it was like forty pages long.

I'm going to put a trigger warning for sexual assault on this recap, just because Tris encounters a moment of it (I suspect that's why chapter fourteen is so short) and it's so clumsily handled that it made me want to throw up and that isn't really a trigger for me. So skip over this recap if that might bother you. Also, I guess I apologise for how serious this recap is, but it seemed irresponsible to not talk about how truly fucked-up and problematic (even though I loathe to use that word) the actions are in this part of the novel.

If it makes you feel better, try and imagine me as this while I was writing this recap:

City of Ashes Chapter 8 Pt 2: Let's play how many people can CC offend in one chapter!

Part 1 can be found here.

Some fun things!

I've heard that CC's involvement with the Shadowhunters TV series is next to none, so while she's still making money off of it, at least the showrunners have a chance at salvaging this mess. And according to lots of people, they're doing a great job of it.

Also, I found out that Harry Shum Jr. plays Bane in the show and I'm just so... that's everything I could have asked for. It makes me want to watch it.

Right, let's bravely dive into the most infuriating chapter I've read in this series, so far.

City of Ashes Chapter 8 Pt 1: Why do you like to watch me suffer?

Lots has happened since I posted! For starters, I've been actually reading books I want to read instead of Divergent and TMI, so that explains the lack of recaps. Uh, also, I have like two jobs (plus a third if you count my nannying), so I'm usually down for the count when I get home from those.

Everyone: hey update ur blogs

me:

Being an adult is hard, you guys. And this chapter is like, torturously long. Like, 'why are you making me suffer' kind of long.

Onwards!

Divergent, Chapter 13: The next person to call Tris a strong female protagonist gets blacklisted

We had a weird interlude of stupid long chapters with this novel, and now we're back to (mercifully) short ones, so I'll take what little victories I can get.

I'm losing patience with this book and its terrible pacing, because as cool as it is to describe each and every one of the initiation stages, that is not something that really needs to take the place of the plot...

Which... I'm still not sure what the main conflict here is. Because if the whole book is 'omg is she gonna get into Dauntless' well, then, I'm sorry, but that's a terrible plot. It is Chapter THIRTEEN and I still don't really know who or what the protagonist is fighting against, and that seems incredibly weird.

Well without further ado, let's see if this chapter brings some plot int the situation!

Don't mind me! Just figuring out some platforms.

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City of Ashes, Chapter 7: It got really nice out where I am so I went outside instead of doing this

Look, I could give you a long-ass explanation as to why this is so damn late, but I’m gonna be honest with y’all… I got nothin’.

We last left our gang of fearful leaders as they were exiting the City of Convenient Plot Points, AKA the Silent City, where a whole race of people were just eradicated. I’m not even kidding; every single Silent Brother was just straight-up murdered.

So, on that light note, let the recap begin!