suspense | Seattle Book Mama

I didn’t want to read this book. I resisted it until it had the Pulitzer; then I caved. And once begun, Tartt’s spellbinding tale owned me until I had turned the final page.

The story begins in an art gallery, which explodes in a manner reminiscent of 9/11. It kills many people, including Theodore Decker’s mother.

I don’t like art galleries. I don’t blow them up; of course not. But they bore me unbearably. I avoid them, and I avoid books that are set there.

Theo hasn’t seen his father in nearly a year; for a long time, it had pretty much been his mother and him against Dad, who came and went at irregular times, drank way too much, and was bad tempered. When he left, they were relieved. He never paid a dime of child support, didn’t even leave a forwarding address. Theo’s short, bad memory of Dad’s parents tells us they would make even worse guardians, and his mother’s folks are dead. With whom, then, will he live?

The teacher in me engaged fully when the process of dealing with Theo’s loss and custody issues commenced. Every counselor, teacher, and government bureaucrat wants him to confide in them about his feelings, his grief. Talking about it is supposed to make him feel better. But it’s a hot-stove topic for Theo, and they go about it all wrong, face to face, brightly lit rooms with fluorescent lights, and in one horrific case, an entire panel of earnest professionals at a big board-meeting table waiting to grill this one, introverted, shy child.

His one hope at first is that the Barbour family will take him in. He’s been skipped a grade in school, and Andy Barbour is his one friend. Together they braved the hazing by resentful older students. The Barbours live quite well, in opulent yet tasteful surroundings. Theo walks on eggshells, avoiding becoming an imposition. It’s awkward; when he needs lunch money or a bandaid, he feels funny asking. But gradually, a consensus seems to emerge; he is good for Andy, and Andy is his mother’s favorite. And just as they are ready to set the lawyers and bureaucratic adoption wheels in motion…Theo’s rotten, irresponsible father turns up to claim him. And there is nothing that Theo or the Barbours can do about it.

By the way, I also don’t read books about affluent people. I like regular folks, people who work hard for shelter, food, and other essentials, and a few simple pleasures. And so this book reminded me that for every rule, there is an exception. I don’t read about art galleries or art, and I don’t read about the rich, but I would be much poorer had I not read this book.

Now, back to Theodore Decker.

Theo has never been out of New York City for more than 8 days, but now he is going to Vegas. He watches horrified as his apartment home, once so secure and comforting, is taken apart, thrown into boxes…and his father takes his girlfriend into his mother’s bedroom, where he hears them rustling through her clothes, the girlfriend giggling over his late mother’s effects. The horror!

Ultimately, Theo’s greatest source of consolation, apart from the Barbours, is a furniture restorer. One of the victims of the bombing asked him to take something there with his last dying breath. And in learning to restore furniture, Theo learns to restore himself. There is a fair amount of philosophical musing toward the end of the book, but by then we care so deeply about Theo that we listen carefully. And whereas some of the somewhat nihilistic ponderings went against my grain, I read every word, because I wanted to know what Theo thought.

My favorite character in this massive, painterly tome is Boris. Boris becomes Theo’s friend in Vegas, where both of them live the lives of feral children, sometimes having to steal food, and taking terrifying risks of all sorts. Boris is fearless, and 99 percent of the time he is loyal. They are nearly killed together multiple times, but Boris pops up again, time time time and again, to stand by his comrade once more.

Those that don’t care for literary fiction won’t like this story. The descriptions were so well done that I sometimes found myself forgetting to breathe. It doesn’t happen a lot, and I read a great deal, but it happened constantly as I read this book. If instead you prefer action, action, action—a book that thinks it’s a video game, perhaps?—then leave The Goldfinch on the shelf for someone else.

I got my copy at the library, but I may buy a nice hardcover copy for my daughter at Christmas. It should be in every library, at least among those that love literature.

To sum up: simply brilliant.

Escape the night? Envision being trapped in a tunnel, inside of a tunnel, inside of a tunnel. Some are metaphoric or symbolic, but there’s a whole lot of darkness in this espionage thriller, a suspenseful tale that will play with your head more than once before the author is done. Thank you to Net Galley and Open Road Media for the ARC.

The setting at the outset is New York City during the McCarthy era. Black Jack Carey owns a publishing house that carries work by a left-leaning writer that is being watched by the CIA. Pressure from HUAC comes to scrap the writer’s work. Son Charles, eldest and best-loved son of Black Jack, refuses to yield to the pressure. Resentful younger son Philip, weaker in character and more easily swayed, takes the side of the government. He hopes his sensible nature will cause his father to will Van Dreelen and Carey to him rather than Charles.

At multiple places within this white-knuckle thriller, I had to put the book away because even with the assistance of sleeping pills, I knew I could not fall asleep if this story was in my hands. Were it not for that, I surely would have finished it sooner. This title along with a nonfiction galley have occupied my interest and attention far more than any of the other four books I’ve been reading.

Our villain, a well-drawn government spook named John Joseph Englehardt, becomes obsessed with the Carey family:

“Englehardt had learned that men who spied on other men, out of the loneliness of such a job, came to like or dislike their chosen quarry. But in his soul, he knew that the secret passion for the Careys grew from something stronger.

“The brothers’ rivalry was also his.”

Eventually Englehardt is officially ordered to abandon the Careys, but his psychosis is too thoroughly developed to let go. He turns to the CIA and is able to extend his surveillance. Phillip Carey’s cause has become his own. He despises Charles and is determined to do whatever dark thing is necessary for Phillip to inherit everything.

Generally speaking, I don’t read books about wealthy folk, and this is for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here. But the characters of John, Phillip, Englehardt, and later, Peter Carey, are so intimately sculpted that I had to buy the author’s premise. Once I did so, the pace picked up and the story was unstoppable.

The ending came with hairpin turns and swift kicks to the reader’s solar plexus, but everything that occurred seemed eminently believable, because the main characters and setting were so palpable.

My one small quibble with the writer–and it’s a common problem in literature not specifically geared toward women, but someone has to talk about it–is that the people who were well developed and occupied center stage were all men. Women existed here only as a foil for what was going to happen to someone else. For the novel to go beyond “really good” to “outstanding”, a novelist needs to be able to develop characters of both genders.

That shouldn’t keep you from buying this title, though. It’s one helluva ride. But don’t think you’re going to read it in small easy pieces. Once you pass a certain point, you have to keep going, and you may see the new day dawning and wonder where the night went.

Also, you’ll want to avoid tunnels for awhile.