The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Only just finished reading The Goldfinch, as I had several other books on the go.Brilliant in certain chapters, you want to keep reading to see what happens, but oh so boring in many other chapters, so much so that I missed out great chunks of it, just skimmed the pages.Boris was a great character and the chapters with him in it were more animated. Too much devotion to describing furniture and feelings, was there ever a more wet character than the main one.Having read her other books, I felt the same, she needs a ruthless editor.

Loved the book but struggled with the overlong descriptive passages too I am halfway through and now hope the rest of the book doesn't let me down.

Clever idea & very captivating.

Well, petallus it's always nice to be agreed with!
I have heard of John Banville but not read anything by him, can you reccommend one?

rosesarered I am agreeing with you again this morning. A friend is mad about the book but I wish it had been edited. I don't find the writing style good enough to wade through loads of description of surroundings.

Has anybody read John Banville? A bit dated but he really captures things for me.

noodles....this is my first post on here. There's just so much to read over the whole site, it's a job to know where to start. You wrote about 'Audible' is this a site like Amazon? I love listening to stories to help me to sleep. I'd really like to find an alternative to Amazon. If you reply to this I hope I can find this thread again, [ wink]

I am just reading it now and a fair few chapters into it. Very well written, but with this author, that's a given.However, and this is just a personal view, all her books need the serious editing they never got, and I am left thinking, 'bored now' please move on.Less gripped by this novel than any of the others.

A friend has just lent me this book she tells me it's really good and we usually agree on books. I read "The Secret History when it was first published and really liked it. I'm currently wading my way through another tome, "The Luminaries" 300 pages in and a mere 500 to go. It's a bit slow and over descriptive for my liking, so I might go back to it, I'm eager to start this new book by Donna Tartt.

She's a great writer and I loved the first half to three quarters of The Goldfinch but, to me, the story lost its way towards the end.

I think Secret History is a brilliant book.

A friend of mine is mad about this book. Think I'll go and download a sample onto my Kindle now.

I loved 'The Secret History'. Will have to give this one a go...

I thoroughly enjoyed it too!

I absolutely loved this novel. It took me a while (200 pages or so) to get into it but I can honestly say I couldn't put it down afterwards Looking forward to her next book.

I'm in the middle of reading this huge novel at the moment, I have the hardback copy which is difficult to carry around so I have it on my kindle as well! I'm really engrossed in the excellent writing, I loved Secret History and have waited the full 10 years for another novel by Donna Tartt.

Coincidence! I am downloading this from Audible now, read by Daniel Weyman. He's an excellent narrator.

I have bought The Goldfinch to read on my Kindle, so look forward to reading it now, I find her an excellent author [although thought her other books needed editing down a bit.]