julijana's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
sarahmsklar8's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Unlike Tartt, I'll get right to the point
- Slow.... SLOOOOOW paced
- Character driven
- Beautiful writing
- Unnecessarily racist, that offered no progress to the plot (the time and location could change without a hiccup to the essence of the story)
- if you like endings to wrap up in a neat little bow, this is not for you.
This woman knows how to write. She's great at it. But it feels like she plants a stunning garden path that elegantly leads to an antiquated brick wall.
Getting through this book was a laborious effort at times. I laboriously flipped though the pages, chapter after never ending chapter. (if you know, you know. I wish someone... anyone... gave this woman a thesaurus so she could throw some variations of the word "laborious" in). I felt like I was having to force myself through some of it, despite how I was invested. Only to find that the entire premise of the story I thought I was getting into, was nothing more than background static
- Slow.... SLOOOOOW paced
- Character driven
- Beautiful writing
- Unnecessarily racist, that offered no progress to the plot (the time and location could change without a hiccup to the essence of the story)
- if you like endings to wrap up in a neat little bow, this is not for you.
This woman knows how to write. She's great at it. But it feels like she plants a stunning garden path that elegantly leads to an antiquated brick wall.
Getting through this book was a laborious effort at times. I laboriously flipped though the pages, chapter after never ending chapter. (if you know, you know. I wish someone... anyone... gave this woman a thesaurus so she could throw some variations of the word "laborious" in). I felt like I was having to force myself through some of it, despite how I was invested. Only to find that the entire premise of the story I thought I was getting into, was nothing more than background static
matcharlyy's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
i_webb's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
2.5
ahsansenan's review against another edition
2.0
To Kill a Mockingbird II: Snakes, Trailer Trash, and Great Aunts
dbjorlin's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars. Definitely my least favorite of the Tartt novels.
storytold's review against another edition
2.0
Donna Tartt always has a project in mind for her novels, and I was determined to figure out what her project for this one was. If I wasn't so determined, I wouldn't have finished the book. It took me the better part of five weeks to get through, and I don't think I can recommend the book to anyone. But what it sets out to do, in respects, it achieves with grace.
Tartt herself grew up in Mississippi in the 1970s with a father she disliked, and the character of Harriet bears striking resemblance to how Tartt continues to look today. It stands to reason that Tartt is likely writing what she knows of home. Without doing any research on it, I suspect this was her attempt at The American Classic: the way The Secret History was Odyssean, and The Goldfinch was Dickensian, this may be meant to exist in the tradition of Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird: stories about economic and structural inequality in the American South.
The problem was that Donna Tartt's American Classic, like The Goldfinch, should be 300 pages shorter, and if it's going to be 650 pages the ending had better be a hell of a lot more satisfying than this one was. I saw evidence of the scaffolding leading to the Chapter 7 climax long before the storylines combined, and I was able to hold out waiting for them to run into each other, but I was expecting a much stronger impact than what we got. Come to think of it, I had this exact problem with The Secret History: the actual last fifty pages were aggressively underwhelming to the point where I was initially starting this review with a two-star rating. No questions were answered. I didn't need the mystery posed in the first chapter to be solved, but the number of loose ends so outnumber the tied ones that I turned to the Acknowledgments page wondering if my ebook copy was missing an entire chapter. I still haven't ruled that possibility out.
But I have a rubric to follow when I'm waffling on a rating, and this wins out with three stars because prose, style, and setting are all so well developed. Tartt is an excellent and historical mimic, and there were several signs of literary mimickry in the text. The action scenes with their ellipses trailing off at the end of paragraphs, the way—when distraught—Harriet's thoughts would repeat a name or a single word with an exclamation mark—Libby! I'm just not well read enough to know who she's imitating, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about this book for a long time trying to figure it out.
The book's first chapter sets it up completely on the wrong foot, and I think it was a mistake to open with a full summary of those events rather than reference them in flashbacks. There are also countless red herrings in this book as to what might be relevant to the plot, and every time I remember a new one, I get mad. It's way overwritten, and unlike The Goldfinch, it's not really building toward any kind of satisfactory ending. The events end; the characters' lives go on; a story was told. Maybe that's enough for a book to be, but I definitely expected at least some degree of narrative satisfaction.
ETA: I changed my mind and bumped it down to two stars again. I get so darn mad!
Tartt herself grew up in Mississippi in the 1970s with a father she disliked, and the character of Harriet bears striking resemblance to how Tartt continues to look today. It stands to reason that Tartt is likely writing what she knows of home. Without doing any research on it, I suspect this was her attempt at The American Classic: the way The Secret History was Odyssean, and The Goldfinch was Dickensian, this may be meant to exist in the tradition of Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird: stories about economic and structural inequality in the American South.
The problem was that Donna Tartt's American Classic, like The Goldfinch, should be 300 pages shorter, and if it's going to be 650 pages the ending had better be a hell of a lot more satisfying than this one was. I saw evidence of the scaffolding leading to the Chapter 7 climax long before the storylines combined, and I was able to hold out waiting for them to run into each other, but I was expecting a much stronger impact than what we got. Come to think of it, I had this exact problem with The Secret History: the actual last fifty pages were aggressively underwhelming to the point where I was initially starting this review with a two-star rating. No questions were answered. I didn't need the mystery posed in the first chapter to be solved, but the number of loose ends so outnumber the tied ones that I turned to the Acknowledgments page wondering if my ebook copy was missing an entire chapter. I still haven't ruled that possibility out.
But I have a rubric to follow when I'm waffling on a rating, and this wins out with three stars because prose, style, and setting are all so well developed. Tartt is an excellent and historical mimic, and there were several signs of literary mimickry in the text. The action scenes with their ellipses trailing off at the end of paragraphs, the way—when distraught—Harriet's thoughts would repeat a name or a single word with an exclamation mark—Libby! I'm just not well read enough to know who she's imitating, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about this book for a long time trying to figure it out.
The book's first chapter sets it up completely on the wrong foot, and I think it was a mistake to open with a full summary of those events rather than reference them in flashbacks. There are also countless red herrings in this book as to what might be relevant to the plot, and every time I remember a new one, I get mad. It's way overwritten, and unlike The Goldfinch, it's not really building toward any kind of satisfactory ending. The events end; the characters' lives go on; a story was told. Maybe that's enough for a book to be, but I definitely expected at least some degree of narrative satisfaction.
ETA: I changed my mind and bumped it down to two stars again. I get so darn mad!
teresa_wlb's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
another_dahlia's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
- Strong character development? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Child death, Racism, Death, Classism, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Murder, Addiction, Cancer, Sexism, Drug abuse, and Drug use