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After seeing it come up on every "Best Books of 2013" list in the world, I suggested Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch: (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) to my book group. We all loved it, and we often don't agree on books.
The book has incredible range. Sprawling comes to mind. It gets a bit sloggy in the middle but I never thought about putting it down.
How does one author know so much? About art, about childhood, about high schools in Las Vegas? About PTSD, and addiction, and anxiety, crime and guilt? About the rich AND the poor, the intelligentsia and the underdogs and the rarified worlds of antique and art collectors? About Russians and oil and Europeans and art?
The book manages to be a Dickensian story of childhood, an Edith Wharton novel of the modern New York drawing room, a crime noir book and an action thriller all at once. And throughout it we have the single voice of Theo Decker to guide us. Though sometimes we even discover that Theo is an unreliable narrator, in moments when others correct his perceptions of the past with their own. Somehow the reader sticks with Theo, and comes to love some of the amazing characters who make their way into his life. I would give anything to meet Boris if he were real!
As with her earlier work, The Secret History the end of the book is in the opening, so we know Theo makes it to adulthood...but the narrative keeps us reaching to see how he gets there.
There is so much pain and anxiety in the book, but it is worth the pay-off at the end, a lush philosphical treatise that ties up all the ends, of the narrative, and of everything you have ever wondered about. A really rich read! And apparently the Pulitzer committee agrees as the book is this year's fiction first prize winner.
Because we had a lot of time and I was curious about Donna Tartt's work after reading so much about her I decided to read her other fairly famous book first, The Secret History in order to have more context about this Tartt phenomena.
Combination of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)
and campus novel, it is a very well done rumination on the nature of morality and the danger of attenuated intellectualism, the power of narcissists and psychopaths, the cult-like following and dangers of charismatic teachers, (something I've witnessed myself, but that is another story) and the effects of class in America. And not one likeable character to boot. But the novel holds together and exhibits the same writerly brilliance. Again, the depiction of addiction rings true, and I am reminded of how much drugs and drinking were on campus.
And now for something completely different! Light, charming yet not superficial, The Rosie Project: A Novel is the kind of book you can read in one night or on a plane and it will make you laugh, move you, and leave you rejoicing. A perfect read with pitch perfect writing. Another great book for the ever-growing cannon on Aspergers and Autism. IF I were creating a mini-class, I would pair this with the wonderful Autism novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon.
By the way, I finally bailed on the Patricia Cromwell series with The Last Precinct (A Scarpetta Novel) which got too maudlin, morbid, depressive and obsessively psychoanalytic about a character who isn't even me, so why would I spent that kind of time in that level of analysis?
Just finished Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters: A Novel but can't blog about it yet because it is on the dock for my next Book Club meeting and that wouldn't be fair...but highly recommended. More later.
After seeing it come up on every "Best Books of 2013" list in the world, I suggested Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch: (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) to my book group. We all loved it, and we often don't agree on books.
The book has incredible range. Sprawling comes to mind. It gets a bit sloggy in the middle but I never thought about putting it down.
How does one author know so much? About art, about childhood, about high schools in Las Vegas? About PTSD, and addiction, and anxiety, crime and guilt? About the rich AND the poor, the intelligentsia and the underdogs and the rarified worlds of antique and art collectors? About Russians and oil and Europeans and art?
The book manages to be a Dickensian story of childhood, an Edith Wharton novel of the modern New York drawing room, a crime noir book and an action thriller all at once. And throughout it we have the single voice of Theo Decker to guide us. Though sometimes we even discover that Theo is an unreliable narrator, in moments when others correct his perceptions of the past with their own. Somehow the reader sticks with Theo, and comes to love some of the amazing characters who make their way into his life. I would give anything to meet Boris if he were real!
As with her earlier work, The Secret History the end of the book is in the opening, so we know Theo makes it to adulthood...but the narrative keeps us reaching to see how he gets there.
There is so much pain and anxiety in the book, but it is worth the pay-off at the end, a lush philosphical treatise that ties up all the ends, of the narrative, and of everything you have ever wondered about. A really rich read! And apparently the Pulitzer committee agrees as the book is this year's fiction first prize winner.
Because we had a lot of time and I was curious about Donna Tartt's work after reading so much about her I decided to read her other fairly famous book first, The Secret History in order to have more context about this Tartt phenomena.Combination of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)
and campus novel, it is a very well done rumination on the nature of morality and the danger of attenuated intellectualism, the power of narcissists and psychopaths, the cult-like following and dangers of charismatic teachers, (something I've witnessed myself, but that is another story) and the effects of class in America. And not one likeable character to boot. But the novel holds together and exhibits the same writerly brilliance. Again, the depiction of addiction rings true, and I am reminded of how much drugs and drinking were on campus.
And now for something completely different! Light, charming yet not superficial, The Rosie Project: A Novel is the kind of book you can read in one night or on a plane and it will make you laugh, move you, and leave you rejoicing. A perfect read with pitch perfect writing. Another great book for the ever-growing cannon on Aspergers and Autism. IF I were creating a mini-class, I would pair this with the wonderful Autism novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeby Mark Haddon.By the way, I finally bailed on the Patricia Cromwell series with The Last Precinct (A Scarpetta Novel) which got too maudlin, morbid, depressive and obsessively psychoanalytic about a character who isn't even me, so why would I spent that kind of time in that level of analysis?
Just finished Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters: A Novel but can't blog about it yet because it is on the dock for my next Book Club meeting and that wouldn't be fair...but highly recommended. More later.
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