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A review by teresatumminello
True Grit by Charles Portis
3.0
3.5 stars
Because this is a well-loved classic, and especially because it is well-loved by some of my closest Goodreads friends, I feel I need to qualify my stars by saying, yes, I did like it. If I didn’t “really like” it, that’s merely because I get tired of ‘action’ rather quickly: as harrowing as Mattie’s last dilemma was, for me it went on too long (I know I have to be in the minority on that). I enjoyed the verbal interplay of the characters and the deadpan voice of Mattie, a woman looking back on what happened to her fourteen-year-old self a quarter-of-a-century ago. The matter-of-fact attitude toward greed, lawlessness and violence may help toward explaining the United States of today.
In the afterword [a:Donna Tartt|8719|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409871301p2/8719.jpg] writes of her love for the book and how that love was passed down to her by its starting with her gentle, innocent, elderly great-grandmother. It wouldn’t be wrong to say the novel became a sort of family Bible—if only for the females, as she doesn’t mention any male relatives—and that Tartt knows it by heart. All very interesting to me, as when I was reading the account of Mattie’s grapples with her enemy, the violent struggle of Harriet with her nemesis in Tartt’s [b:The Little Friend|775346|The Little Friend|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327936589s/775346.jpg|1808852] came immediately to mind. Now that I’ve read this, I know Harriet’s (literary) ancestor.
Because this is a well-loved classic, and especially because it is well-loved by some of my closest Goodreads friends, I feel I need to qualify my stars by saying, yes, I did like it. If I didn’t “really like” it, that’s merely because I get tired of ‘action’ rather quickly: as harrowing as Mattie’s last dilemma was, for me it went on too long (I know I have to be in the minority on that). I enjoyed the verbal interplay of the characters and the deadpan voice of Mattie, a woman looking back on what happened to her fourteen-year-old self a quarter-of-a-century ago. The matter-of-fact attitude toward greed, lawlessness and violence may help toward explaining the United States of today.
In the afterword [a:Donna Tartt|8719|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409871301p2/8719.jpg] writes of her love for the book and how that love was passed down to her by its starting with her gentle, innocent, elderly great-grandmother. It wouldn’t be wrong to say the novel became a sort of family Bible—if only for the females, as she doesn’t mention any male relatives—and that Tartt knows it by heart. All very interesting to me, as when I was reading the account of Mattie’s grapples with her enemy, the violent struggle of Harriet with her nemesis in Tartt’s [b:The Little Friend|775346|The Little Friend|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327936589s/775346.jpg|1808852] came immediately to mind. Now that I’ve read this, I know Harriet’s (literary) ancestor.