The Goldfinch - BokDraken

Publicerades 28 november 2013 av Little, Brown and Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-05543-7
OCLC-nummer:: 855491725

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity.

It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously …

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity.

It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

10 utgåvor

Björn recenserade The Goldfinch av Donna Tartt

None

4 stjärnor

Well, it's a good novel. Probably not a great one, but a far worthier follow-up to The Secret History than the mediocre The Little Friend. A boy orphaned after a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum is thrown into a 21st-century Dickens tale, drifting from well-meaning but busy foster parents to various crooks and gamblers, all the while unable to tell anyone that when he woke up in the rubble of the Dutch Masters wing, bleeding and in shock, he for some unfathomable reason stuck the titular 17th century priceless masterpiece in his bag and has been keeping it ever since... While the story could have done with a bit of tightening up, as there's really very little plot as such, I blazed through all 800 pages of it in under a week and enjoyed the whole ride, both the portrait of upper-class Manhattanites clashing with struggling Russian immigrants …

Well, it's a good novel. Probably not a great one, but a far worthier follow-up to The Secret History than the mediocre The Little Friend. A boy orphaned after a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum is thrown into a 21st-century Dickens tale, drifting from well-meaning but busy foster parents to various crooks and gamblers, all the while unable to tell anyone that when he woke up in the rubble of the Dutch Masters wing, bleeding and in shock, he for some unfathomable reason stuck the titular 17th century priceless masterpiece in his bag and has been keeping it ever since... While the story could have done with a bit of tightening up, as there's really very little plot as such, I blazed through all 800 pages of it in under a week and enjoyed the whole ride, both the portrait of upper-class Manhattanites clashing with struggling Russian immigrants and of the underlying question of just WHY he must hold on to a piece of art that he can never show to anyone. Tartt's good at balancing characters and the way they're unknowingly trapped by the story they create for themselves; Greek tragedy in TSH, Dickensian-DeLilloan bildungsroman here. Not great, but quite good.

I wish I could say the same for the translator, though. The Swedish translation is a complete hatchet job, rushed out to compete with the original, and if I didn't have to write a review specifically of the Swedish edition I would have tossed it aside the second the translator mistakes "Native American" for "domestic". And that's far from the worst example. So that's **** for the original, ** for the translation.

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