Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Le Chardonneret by Donna Tartt

35 reviews

bizzyizzybee's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racial slurs, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Suicide, Violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Gun violence, Cursing, Grief, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, and Vomit

melissagohard's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Loved the plot and overall vibe of the book but honestly it was about 300 pages longer than it needed to be. A lot of meandering and repetitive motifs. Still glad I read it but I think the emotional payoff would have been stronger with a more concise and tighter delivery. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, and Drug use

Minor: Death of parent

no1hozierfan's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Mental illness, Addiction, Alcohol, Drug use, Death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Murder, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Vomit, and Gore

Minor: Racial slurs

afk2022's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I find this a hard book to review largely because it is so big. While reading, it can feel slow, and dense, emotionally straining and frankly, obsessive and excessive in the descriptions of depression, suicide and drug use. I feel like Tartt is pulling all this into s grander narrative though. On one level it is about Theo, a boy who after a simply awful act of God fails to fulfil his potential, makes the wrong friends and enters a dark path, all while seeing others suffer along the way. We stay with Theo through all his downward spiral and bad decisions, and by the end of the novel he hasn’t really turned it around - he just intends to.

On the other hand, it is a novel about love. Love for people and love for concepts, really. It is about how love and care for something bigger than oneself can give one purpose and drive when life is hard, and how this purpose can help motivate you to take the next step. There’s this triangulation of the painting, his mother and Pippa. Theo obesses over all of them. But the painting casts the other two into relief. Theo ends up obsessing and loving the concept of his mother and Pippa, the memory as it were. The painting, arguably more of a concept than the other two, is more real to Theo, and helps him recontextualise his life to view the other two as what they are, concepts and ideas of memory. It’s an interesting way to explore how these “larger” concepts help illuminate the smaller, closer ones in our lives. 

As usual with a Tartt novel, sexuality is ambiguous and I’m not sure what to say about that. 

This novel isn’t for everyone, and I can see why it has received the criticism it has received to date. However, I do think it is brilliant both in scope and style, and in the way it explores the complexity of life, fate, choice, mortality and love.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Gun violence, and Suicide

marianneiriss's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Should you read The Goldfinch? Yes, but also no:

If you’ve read and enjoyed other long, slow, and at times frustrating books (for example, Crime and Punishment!), you like to read books with entirely unlikeable characters and unreliable narrators, and you don’t mind forays into odd, illogical, trains of thought and extremely long sentences - yes, definitely read The Goldfinch! 

If you’ve read and enjoyed The Secret History, and you are hoping for something in the same vein of content/themes from The Goldfinch - I probably wouldn’t recommend it to you, because it’s honestly nothing like TSH, and I think you might be disappointed if you go into expecting it to be similar!

Personally, I thought that although it’s not an easy read, it was worth it. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about The Goldfinch since I finished last month. 

I loved the lyrical writing - Donna Tartt has beautiful prose. And she captures this feeling of a kind of resigned despair so well, it pervades the entire book. I actually had to take a bit of a break from reading it at one point just to read something a bit less unhappy (I wouldn’t class this as ‘a sad book’ necessarily, but it is an unhappy book, at times desperately so). I’ve included some content warnings at the end of this review, and I would recommend looking into them before you decide to commit to reading The Goldfinch, as it does deal with heavy subject matter. 

All this being said, I did think that it is a fantastic book overall, and if you’re currently battling through it I would recommend sticking with it, as you’ll be glad by the end that you did. Despite how frustrating it feels at times - I certainly felt like yelling at Theo “please, just don’t do that, just don’t” at multiple points! - it is well worth persevering with it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Cursing, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Suicide, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Drug use, Death of parent, Drug abuse, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Blood, Gun violence, Toxic friendship, Murder, Abandonment, and Infidelity

mawn323's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Suicide attempt, Drug use, Alcohol, Suicide, Drug abuse, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Alcoholism, Murder, and Medical content

tovahs's review against another edition

dark funny slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, Gun violence, Bullying, Blood, Vomit, Child abuse, Racial slurs, Mental illness, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Fire/Fire injury, Drug use, Grief, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Addiction, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, and Death of parent

rhughes7's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This books reads like a modern Brothers Karamazov. Slow-paced and artful, it felt like sinful to leave it unfinished, and yet I had to read in small chunks. The plot is long and winding, and it seems very much driven by the events of the main character’s life, rather than one particular storyline or plot. Of course, this makes sense because

Spoiler

Theo reveals at the end that he composed this book originally as a series of letters to his dead mother

. This book speaks truthfully of childhood trauma, PTSD, and addiction, as well as questioning the purpose of art and objects, and broaching the unquestionable brutality of life. I would not recommend this book to the casual reader, as I myself had to commit specific time to reading it and did not often find myself *wanting* to read it. And yet, once I picked it up, I was engrossed, and there was never a time I considered not finishing it (hence several overdue notices from the library!). A final note, the last 20 or so pages are fairly “preachy,” which, while it bothers me in the abstract, I actually rather enjoyed reading. I will be thinking about this one for a while, and wish I had a seminar class with which to discuss. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Suicide

ashleymg99's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Overall, I loved the book. The Goldfinch is a love letter to art, and the profound effect it has on us. My only complaint is that some parts are very slow. However, these slow sections often crescendo into one short line that changes the trajectory of the whole story.

Spoiler

these points mimic the explosion that began our journey, often “dropping a bomb” on the reader - and often marks the death of a significant figure in Theo’s life. His Mother. Welty. His Father. Andy and Mr. Barbour. All these deaths are sudden, accidental, and tragic.

. If you like antiques, art crimes, nihilism, and found family, you’ll love The Goldfinch. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide attempt, Drug use, Grief, Addiction, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, Mental illness, Death, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Suicide, Car accident, Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, and Panic attacks/disorders

nabila99's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship, Child abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Death, Death of parent, Violence, Gun violence, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Grief, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, Murder, Addiction, and Blood

Moderate: Homophobia, Pedophilia, Abandonment, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexism