The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

 

It took me about a month to read this book. In part because of its fairly imposing size, but mostly because the book is full of snakes. Literally to the brim. And if my phobic self had realized that before the start, I wouldn't have even started this novel...

Yet, I enjoyed it more than The Goldfinch. It's a bit of a 21st century Stand By Me with a hint of To Kill a Mockingbird, detailing the stories that children tell themselves to explain events around them, the risks that they obliviously run and their first experiences of love or something resembling that. 

Needless to say, though, it's not exactly the kind of novel that makes me want to visit rural Mississippi anytime soon, and not just (though mostly) because of the snakes. 

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

There is nothing wrong with reading a best-seller every now and again. In particular one that has won the Pulitzer Prize. In particular one that was bought for 2 cheeky pounds.

However, there are plenty of things that I think are wrong with this particular book: it’s long; Donna Tartt spends the first 400 pages of it essentially trying to persuade the reader of how good-natured the main character is before making his dramatic entry into the criminal underworld (and the fact that it essentially jumps from Theo’s return from Vegas straight into his shady dealings makes you wonder what he has actually done in the meantime – it’s not quite like what’s happened to Jesus between the age of 12 and 30, but almost…), and most of all the ending, with its banal comments about life, its meaning, and its shortness, is so trite that I actually really struggled to read that final chapter.

On the plus side, though, the art comments are really interesting, but probably that’s because I’m Italian and, never having had much time for Dutch and Flemish art, most of those were actually new to me…

Still, I have to recognize that this is a book that has to be read. And, at least in my case, one that should be pretty much forgotten once it’s over.