Review: The Goldfinch

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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



When you look at this brick of a book your first impression, as mine was, might be: "Holy crap this better be good or I will use it as toilet paper for the next 10 years of my life!" The Goldfinch is a 771 page behemoth of a book (or in my case, a 36 hour audiobook joyride!) but it is one of the most incredible pieces of fiction I've read in a long time. I was travelling a lot in the last few month so I decided that it would be easier to tackle an audiobook of this scale than to hack away at a few pages at a time.

I would consider it to be primarily a book of "literary fiction", not clearly fitting into a subgenre that I generally read. It's one of those books that is built upon fantastically crafted characters and beautifully written prose. The writing is simply impeccable. Donna Tartt did something that is rare in books with a great concept - she executed it perfectly.

I have to admit that I have a great love for tragic characters (perhaps this says something of my own life) and The Goldfinch is chock full of them. There's something about Theo Decker that I think almost anyone can see in themselves. Many of his decisions are those that I could imagine myself making in such tragic circumstances. I found myself regularly on the edge of tears. I felt much like the boy in The Neverending Story movie who is so involved in the book that he can literally be heard and felt by the characters.

In my opinion, this is one of the best books of the year and should be read by everyone. It is surely a modern classic.

(Just a quick note on the audiobook version: The narrator, David Pittu, was one of the best I've ever experienced. I think that can often make or break a good book.)



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Review: Red Rising

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Red Rising by Pierce Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Giving Red Rising a 5-star review is likely one of the easiest things I will do today... and I plan to sit around and do not much more than take a long nap. In a sea of dystopian fiction, Red Rising has managed to stand out as something much more interesting. People are jumping quickly to compare it to The Hunger Games, Enders Game, etc. but that's such an unfair generalization of an incredible book simply because it has similar elements that are common in most dystopian fiction. Hunger Games is a kids book. Sure, I enjoyed it, but it was fluff. Red Rising is gritty and dark and adult. No, there's not much sex or profanity... but there plenty of violence. Bloody, ruthless, constant violence. And it's brilliant!

Red Rising is a combination of science fiction, dystopian fiction, and action/adventure. It was a sprinkling of all the best stuff about those genres packaged into an amazing nerdgasm!

I only really have one complaint in Red Rising: it's written in 1st-person. In general I hate this method of writing. It seems juvenile. Pierce Brown manages to make it work very very well but I still wish he would have chosen a different perspective. A minor flaw in the overall picture, I suppose.

This is arguably one of the best dystopian novels I've read. It takes all of the elements of a good story and combines them into an action-packed novel. There are very few series that I continue with but this one I will be waiting for impatiently.



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