The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: Gorgeous Prose and a Harrowing Story

A review by Bruce P. Grether

The Goldfinch, is a remarkable story in which I truly lived and felt compelled to keep reading through the long narrative, though sections of the book were difficult to live through. The writing is superb throughout, and Tartt has written a totally plausible account of the emotionally walking wounded, her narrator a boy traumatized by a horrific tragedy, yet graced by the endowment of a mysterious gift, as well.

Though the narrator of the novel, Theo Decker, (fictionally) takes custody of the actual painting, The Goldfinch, painted by Carel Fabritius in 1654, the painting itself is not the legacy he believes it to be. In fact, he does not steal the painting in the ordinary sense, and yet to him it becomes more valuable than its incalculable “resale” value. Rather than plant too many spoilers in this review, let me simply say that Theo’s life after the initial loss his mother is challenging, sometimes tortured and even horrific. In fact, his self-destructive behavior can be an ordeal for the reader, and yet it makes sense that he would behave thus—all too much sense!

This is a lengthy book, at 771 pages, and yet I regretted it ending. It contains a treasure chest of choice characters with layers of plausible depth and living, breathing reality, particularly Pippa, Mrs. Barbour, Hobie, and the wild, rather dangerous though basically decent Boris. Theo’s path is circuitous and obsessive, beset with sudden catastrophes, and sometimes, coincidences, yet these are not implausible; any life fully lived has plenty of such significant unexpected connections, meetings and surprises.

Something I could not much identify with and often found harrowing, was the abundance of heavy drinking and drug use in much of the book, and yet in retrospect this is also understandable because of Theo’s horrific history. Curiously, his wild and crazy, beloved friend Boris has a very different attitude and response to his own traumatic history. These close friends have a relationship of admirable complexity and the kind of nuances and contradictions of behavior we actually experience. Also, though I understand why some have said the novel is somewhat “Dickensian,” it exists solidly in the current world of iPhones and laptops, which gives it a sharp and even dangerous contemporary edge.

I definitely came to love and admire Mrs. Barbour, Hobie, and even Boris, more than Theo himself, who remained deeply flawed throughout, though he finally grew and changed somewhat eventually, if not a great deal. Something quite fascinating in retrospect is that within the “reality frame” of the novel, Theo as narrator must be just as talented a writer as Donna Tartt. It’s entirely told in first person, and the concluding pages provide a succession of stunning grace notes without any phony salvation involved.

One more intriguing element here is the fact that the actual painting, The Goldfinch, presented with some true backstory, is also given a detailed fictional history for over a decade of its existence, a kind of alternate timeline to “this,” and finally it provides that delicate, mysterious and profound interplay between art and life, which in lesser hands could seem trite. In fact, art and life converge perfectly here!

I consider this novel, like the titular painting, to be a genuine masterwork.

A Legacy of Love and Lions

We who dream of the stars and examine Mars

From here on this swirled blue sphere

Forget to park the shoes of our minds by the temple’s door.

We still don’t have flying cars—

Yet we peer into the Earth’s deep core

And into the atom’s heart

And our own hand remains

An unsolved mystery.

All it takes to embrace and to totally love

These last lions on the planet’s face

Is: overcome fear of yourself

And your connection with everything.

Grow up, human race!

Accept Creation’s

Gratuitous grace.

And what you easily miss is this:

The unexpected gift of exponential change’s kiss.

When the overloaded senses grow dull

The mind paces forth and back in the skull

Then the overloaded senses grow dull.

Our iLife evolves so rapidly now

No one can anticipate how strange

Those vivid clouds upon the horizon

May in truth become—for evolution

Is not simply improvement,

As imagined by some:

It is adaptation.

It is Ancient Egypt’s naked face

In orbital space—

Arms open wide
And Sacred Heart ablaze in the chest.

It’s this fearless embrace

Of the huge male African lion

It’s a necklace of tropical islands

Afloat on a future of smart matter

That knows and tolerates us…

It’s children and its creators

Just now waking up

To these realities

Of stardust.

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

Days grow tangibly shorter

And daylight more precious

As nights grow longer

Yet the dark provides

It’s protective embrace…

Life grows longer and stronger

With every heartbeat, each breath

As the pathways open their arms before you

Yet the quantum wave function collapses in death.

Don’t forget the Sea God’s Trident—

The summoning conch trumpet;

The Pharos Lighthouse stands

Sentinel before the harbor of your dreams:

Don’t forget.

This Holy Night sprouts antlers

That are golden boughs where mistletoe bristles

Where every whispering Druid plays his part

And remembers that sting of Lord Balder’s murder—

Antlers branch forth from the darkest heart.

Each one stands alone

Within the crimson glow of the four-chambered heart;

Ancestors stand in tender infinity

Of living, shimmering stardust

Empowered by sacred desire

Behind each living, arising form

Within each crown of creation,

Each culminating mystery

Of living atomic fire.

Bruce P. Grether 12.19.13

An Exquisite and Vibrant Epic Tale

Bruce P. Grether's review of THE WOLVES OF MIDWINTER by Anne Rice

Though The Wolves of Midwinter, Anne Rice’s latest novel, arrived at my home on publication day, I’ve waited a while to write my review in order to carefully consider why I feel it’s so superb. Immediately upon receiving the beautifully printed and bound hardcover, I placed in the front one of the signed bookplates sent to me by the author. Let me apologize ahead of time for the over-use of superlatives…

Though this novel clocks in at no more than 388 pages, it exemplifies the best qualities of an epic tale. This truly is an epic journey that embraces and enfolds you and sweeps you away, and you don’t want it to end! It’s a journey in which a great deal of ground is covered and many, varied adventurers unfold, though none of them seems rendered in haste. At the same time, there’s no unnecessary padding—the prose is lean and clean, with a classic undertone and still it sounds contemporary. I feel that Anne’s somewhat “experimental” prose of Blood Canticle, the last Vampire Chronicle, with an almost jazz-like quality, and all of her writings since then feed into the quality of this one.

When I reached the satisfying conclusion, I would gladly have continued all the way through yet another volume of this series, that third novel which is hopefully on its way before long. In this fantastic follow-up to The Wolf Gift, various mysteries and revelations draw the reader all the way through.

Wolves may be Anne Rice’s finest writing so far, in my opinion, every bit as fresh and entrancing as her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, and as skillful, meticulous and alive as Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. With this return to the realm of Nideck Point, the story feels like a genuine interval of life; several major plotlines gracefully interweave, and we encounter no less than two new species of immortals. (You could count three species, if you include a certain tormented ghost.)

Something I especially love about this tale is the fact that through most of the novel it is raining! The rainfall becomes intensely atmospheric and holds the entire book together somehow. The northern California coast and redwood forest setting, plus the magnificent old house of Nideck Point, and the nearby village are wonderful to experience and inhabit during the interim. I love the places as much as I love the people.

More than ever before, Anne employs a vivid economy of means to bring this journey alive in the mind’s eye, and in the heart of the reader.

Of particular fascination are the two entirely new species of immortals, the “Beloved Minions” and the Forest Gentry, both central to the story. The Wolves of Midwinter also offers significant developments in the story of Reuben Golding’s tormented brother, Jim, and their father, Phil, a man under-appreciated by his family. At one point, Phil asks a question important to everyone: “Why don’t people do what they really want to do, Reuben?”

Anne also delivers the kind of truly astonishing moments she is capable of rendering in the last brief chapter of the book, including a wonderful revelation that concerns Phil and one of the “Minions”—so anyone wishing to be totally surprised, don’t peek!

Bravo, Anne, and encore!

The Roadrunner of Death

I AM not what you think
I AM.
I stalk everything.

I AM natural recycling.

Sometimes I even take wing,

And from wherever they bask or slink
I pluck your squirming dreams.

There's no escape from
The towering fiery Eye's
Fierce blink.

Tomorrow or today
-No exceptions,
No shades of gray-
All must drink.

DRINK ME.
DRINK ME and you may
Smell the Roses.

You cannot know
If I come or I go
For my feet have two toes in front
And two in back;
So with equal ease
I retreat or I attack.

Yes. I AM predatory.
I AM beautiful.
In me, you can trust.
Do not fear me.
I AM discernment's knife.
I AM common as stardust.
I AM the appetite for life.

I AM the One
Everyone requires to remain awake
To the miracle of each heartbeat-
To how irreplaceable is each breath.

I AM the Roadrunner of Death.

Only be my friend and ally
And I will bestow this gift:
Though you're totally aware,
I may be merciful
And swift.

Revisiting ARMAND

It was Marius—when I recently re-read BLOOD AND GOLD—who ushered me back to revisit Armand. THE VAMPIRE ARMAND has always been among my favorites of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, only partly because of its strong homoerotic and bisexual themes. The historical periods and places come vividly alive, and the story deftly weaves strands into all of the other VC novels. As usual, those who may think Anne Rice ever repeated herself with this series are not paying attention. Each of the VCs creates a totally new experience. While sometimes they examine familiar portions of the web of narratives from very different viewpoints, each look yields truly unique aspects of events and characters.

Armand manifests two strong and parallel tendencies of human nature, both as a mortal and as an immortal, which are the desire to belong to someone and depend on them, and the desire to have others belong to you. Neither of these—and of course they most often co-exist to some extent—is necessarily perverse in any way; however, such needs always amplify the bitter-sweetness of both human and vampire existence. The bitterness includes rejection, betrayal and terrible loss. The sweetness may seem to make existence worthwhile, yet it can also evaporate at any moment.

Though I appreciate the performance of Antonio Banderas as Armand in the film INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE his appearance was not quite right for me. I prefer how Armand appears in the novels: an eternally beautiful teenager with flowing red curls. His angelic appearance belies the fact he can suddenly become the Angel of Death. Yet I always sense a deep inner core of Armand that not even kidnapping, slavery, prostitution, emotional turmoil, killing, horrific loss and other travails can quite destroy. His Original Innocence seems to survive somewhere beneath any tarnish upon that lovely, ageless exterior, even if it lies buried and he often keeps it well hidden.

Like many other readers I absorbed ARMAND for the first time in 1998 still unsure of when, or even if, our beloved hero Lestat would ever emerge from the comatose state in which he lay since the wild conclusion of MEMNOCH THE DEVIL. (SPOILER ALERT! LOTS OF THEM!) That remarkable adventure left both Lestat and us as readers uncertain whether Memnoch actually was anything like the Christian Devil, or merely some kind of potent spirit playing cat and mouse with him.

However, there was some evidence: the veil Lestat brought back. Lestat claimed it was the actual, original “Veil of Veronica” from the legend of a woman who was said to have wiped the face of Christ on his way to Calvary with her veil, when the cloth received a likeness of his face upon it. Considered a great relic, the fate of the actual veil was unknown for certain in modern times—until (in the VC universe) Lestat brought the veil back from his experience of some kind of “Other Side” or time travel about two millennia into the past.

All this serves as a preamble to Armand consenting to tell his own story to David Talbot, now an immortal and sort of scribe since THE BODY THIEF. While Lestat remains out of it, Armand agrees to David’s request. Clearly Armand survived his evident burning in the sunlight at the end of MEMNOCH, when he went to view the veil on public display. We learn that he was badly burned as he flew up into daylight and tumbled into a building. (Thus the inverto of the original cover art.) Though damaged, Armand managed to telepathically contact a girl and boy named Sybelle and Benji, who rescued him and when he recovered, he had fallen in love with them both.

Armand’s journey seems to broadly echo that of Anne Rice herself, from a childhood of faith, young adulthood of questioning and moving away from faith, and an eventual return. ARMAND was published in 1998, the same year Ms. Rice returned to the Catholic Church, and though in 2010 she publicly disavowed Christianity and all organized religion, she retains her own strong personal, private faith.

Long before ARMAND was published, I viewed the VC overall as a journey in the direction of faith—not organized religion—so much as a quest to retrieve the spiritual significance of existence. Armand journeys from icon-painting Eastern Orthodox boy, to become master of his own satanic vampire coven who no longer feels God answers prayers if God exists at all, back to such a shattering return to faith that he feels ready to end his existence—or thinks he is.

Near the end of the novel, Marius asks Armand about his own vision of Christ when he looked at the veil. Armand repudiates all typical religious descriptions of who and what Christ may be. David presses him for more specifics and, Armand says, “He was…my brother. […] Yes. That is what He was, my brother, and the symbol of all brothers, and that is why He was the Lord, and that is why His core is simply love.”

Almost immediately after this scene, some of the contemporary vampires are gathered under the stars, and Armand is adjusting to the fact that Marius gave his mortal children, Benji and Sybelle the Dark Gift against his wishes. Unexpectedly Lestat returns to them, conscious though he seems groggy and still weakened, Sybelle’s piano playing has awakened him.

I do not suggest too strong a parallel between ARMAND and the author’s own journey away from religion and eventually back to genuine faith, still it’s among the greatest themes in existence. This time as I re-read this magnificent novel the return of Lestat seemed to me a kind of resurrection with genuine emotional impact.

I’ve always felt that a major theme of all the VCs is how, mortal or immortal, we hunger for the warm-hearted companionship of others at least as much as we wish to survive in some form, and Armand exemplifies this in many way. His return to some variety of faith also inspires him to try to have more trust in others, such as David and Marius.

I do love Armand himself, though his role in the destruction of Claudia still troubles me. Now he points me back to Merrick Mayfair. She is the one who eventually, fully awakens Lestat from his hiatus, after Louis attempts to destroy himself over the matter of Claudia, and Lestat must help revive Louis. Ah, what a tangled web!

Thus the next VC for me to revisit is MERRICK.

Bruce P. Grether