The Goldfinch / The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

100 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Donna Tartt is an American author who has achieved critical and public acclaim for her novels, which have been published in forty languages. In 2003 she received the WH Smith Literary Award for her novel, The Little Friend, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch.

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt has won The Pulitzer for Literature in 2014, it is ranked 765th on the Greatest Books of All Time, and has around one million ratings on Goodreads, for the first encounter I was quite satisfied, even managed to finish the long work, but at the second encounter, it did not appear so formidable, in case ‘you wish to accept it’, you have the invitation to visit my blogs, where more than five thousand notes on books and films await your approval https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... or maybe criticism...



8 out of 10

This is my point of view, expressed when after I first read The Goldfinch https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... Pulitzer Prize Winner

Indeed, it is a complex, captivating work, with an admirable main character – if it is not The Goldfinch – Theo Decker, who is thirteen when we first meet him, visiting the art museum with his mother…the latter dies in the explosion of a bomb, her son gets this ring from a dying man, and then the precious Goldfinch

He is spending some time with a family in New York, becomes friends with Hobie and Pippa, the red-haired girl he had briefly encountered at the museum, before the terrorist attack that killed his mother and her uncle…
However, when his biological father comes to claim his rights, Theo has to go with his legal guardian, on the outskirts of Las Vegas, where they have built too many houses (at that time, or in the book anyway) and it is rather desolate

Let me mention in passing that I have also read The Secret History https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... mainly because it was 223rd on

- The Greatest Books of All Time site

In Las Vegas, the hero has a new friend, Boris, the son of a Ukrainian, both boys have serious problems with their parents, Larry only took Theo in order to get to his money, or the inheritance that his late mother left him
This despicable parent tries to impersonate a lawyer and get a huge sum from the bank account, then abuses his son, and makes him call so that he gets a transfer of $ 65,000, which the father would steal, for that is the word

Fortunately, the fund is protected, meant to be used for the boy’s future higher education, and can only be transferred into the account of a university, ergo not available for the gambling, awful Larry, who dies eventually
Now for friend Boris – Thomas Mann comes to mind https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... for he has a mesmerizing story, in which he writes about the difference between fiction and real life

There was this personage who was aghast at how people use to say ‘I love you so much, there are no words to say it’, or ‘we are such good friends, words are too feeble’, when in fact, we find real love, friends only in fiction…

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence
Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’