www.annemoore.net

 

 

 

 

 

Reading in Montreal: Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”

To and from Montreal last weekend I carried Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, a 771 page hardback. No regrets.

I had a wonderful time in Montreal, visiting my sweet son Evan, who’s a student at McGill University. I was smiling ear to ear at the prospect of spending a weekend with him in a world city, eating steak frites and drinking bols of cafe au lait. Also, stopping in at the Musee des Beaux Arts for a mostly forgettable exhibit of Venetian art and musical instruments from the Renaissance and a wholly memorable show of photographs, by Canadians, from the 70’s. http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/

Even with all the touring and eating, I had lots of time to read: waiting for and during Porter Airlines very civilized flights and at my chic hotel, Le Meridien Versailles. www.lemeridienversailleshotel.com. I read mornings before our day would begin and nights after the day had ended.

It’s a behemoth of a book (Kindle, I know! But I don’t like reading on a device.) Truly, I should have been charged a baggage fee.

I’m not complaining! I love an oversized read. Like a Charles Dickens’ novel — and this is most certainly a twist on a Dickens novel — this book kept me company.

Thirteen year old New Yorker Theo Decker loses his stylish mother in a terrorist blast at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, Theo is given an unusual gold ring from a dying man, the name of a shop, and a priceless Dutch painting, Carel Fabritus’ 1654 The Goldfinch, no bigger than a laptop.

The ring brings Theo to a Greenwich Village address that will one day be his home and place of work. Before and after that, the story takes our hero — and that painting — from New York to Las Vegas to New York and on to Amsterdam. Along the way, Theo steals and abuses drugs and alcohol, rescues a dog, fakes the provenance of antiques, falls into a disloyal love, loses the painting, and gets involved in a fatal shoot-out over that painting. Suicidal, he receives a ghostly visit from…

This read is best understood as a mash up Dickens’ Great Expectations and Dan Chaon’s gothic thriller Await Your Reply.

Tartt is a smooth writer. I never once lost interest in the story, in spite of her preachiness, her tendency to tell instead of show. (Theo is in love with Pippa: got it. Art is worth saving and sharing with all mankind. Noted.) I didn’t even especially like Theo — mmm, a drug abusing art thief — but I stayed with this story.

What a cast of characters! I especially enjoyed the well-drawn Barbour family, and Hobie, the antique-furniture expert who opens his heart and home and business to Theo.

I finished The Goldfinch on the last leg of my journey back to Chicago. Did I love it? No. Can I recommend it? Yes. It was a fat long read, a welcome travel companion.

Also in the blog

It’s worth repeating: I love to read, and write, a life. A memoir of the Paris/New York life of Richard Seaver, an American publisher, is hard to give up. What a man, what a life. Seaver (1926 – 2009) was teaching math and coaching wrestlers at the Pomfret School in Connecticut (a funny, charming chapter)

(...)

Films: I can’t stop thinking about Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. It is perfect; not one wasted scene. The story he tells, the actors he employed, sets and wardrobe, its twists and turns. Mmmmmmm… Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine has lost her la la life in New York City, where her husband (Alec Baldwin) ran a money fund.

(...)

In the months after summer’s heat, Chicago’s crisp sunny days pull me, and my dog, to the beach. There’s no one there! My North Avenue beach is banked by man-made dunes. Get yourself beyond those and the beach offers a wide swath of sand pebbled with crushed shells. Also washed-up wood slabs from wave-smashed piers,

(...)

14 thoughts on "Reading in Montreal: Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”"