Mississippi writer Donna Tartt's third novel, "The Goldfinch," is in many ways a tour de force--one has the feeling that she possesses the writing razzle-dazzle to pull off almost anything on the printed page, and frequently she does, skillfully moving this work from New York to Las Vegas, back to New York, then Amsterdam, then back again to New York over a period of some fourteen years in a boy's life, from the age of thirteen to twenty- seven, from the cusp of adolescence to young manhood. In literary parlance this type of novel is called a "Bildungsroman," a "coming of age" story that has many precedents in literature, the most well-known probably being the novels of Charles Dickens, such as "Oliver Twist," "David Copperfield" and "Great Expectations." Superimposed upon this work is a sensational plot, involving terrorism, gambling, the underworld, drug use, art theft and even murder. It's almost as if Tartt said to herself, "I can't write just another coming of age story, I have to make it relevant to our times." And so she does, perhaps going overboard in the process, but that's my judgment--I happen to like subtlety, and we do not live in an age of understatement, nor does Donna Tartt-- if anything, she overstates and overwrites in all but a few of this novel's 775 pages.
This is an old fashioned, plot/character driven work that
moves propulsively forward with elements of mystery and suspense. Setting too plays an important part and is
vividly realized, especially in the New York and Las Vegas portions of the
novel. Much of the tone of the work
seems overwrought, but then so are the events and the protagonist, Theo Decker,
who, in the opening section of the novel, experiences injury and the death of
others in a horrific explosion in, of all places, an exhibition of Dutch
Masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Theo's escape, along with a masterpiece of Dutch painting, Carel
Fabritius' "The Goldfinch," forms the backbone of the story, and it
is ultimately the enduring power of art to bring about redemption and reconciliation
that gives the novel its most powerful thematic element. If this is too blatantly stated in the last
chapter of the book, it is nonetheless necessary, to give this work a sense of
hope--otherwise we are left with a wreck of a human being who has desperately
failed to put his life back together after the deaths of both his mother and
father.
Though all the old fashioned elements are present, there
is nothing in the least old fashioned about the way Ms. Tartt tells her
story. It has all the gritty and at
times ugly naturalistic detail of a contemporary novel, but it also has moments
of sheer beauty and sensitivity, especially when it deals with the creative and
restorative processes in life that make it worth living. The older antique dealer Hobie and the tough
young Boris stand at opposite poles in Theo's life, the Apollo and Dionysus of
his existence. These two characters are
drawn so well that they almost leave young Theo in the shade, a sympathetic but
at times rather pale protagonist in contrast to these two, one of whom regrettably
is swallowed up by the end of the novel.
Perhaps it is so with life, as the author hints, paying her highest
tribute to a work of art like "The Goldfinch," a creation that not
only escapes destruction but gives meaning to life after death.