Now THIS is the book I’ve been waiting for from Tartt after the frustrating disappointment of The Little Friend. This is an old-school sprawling epic about trauma, grief, art, love, denial, and much, much more. After a slow start, I ended up extremely emotionally engaged and look forward to requesting it for Yuletide.
If you liked The Secret History, you will probably like this; if you didn’t, you probably won’t. Though the plots and most of the characters are completely different, the narrative voice is similar and there’s a hard-to-pin-down feel that’s also similar. If Richard Papen drove you up the wall, Theo Decker probably will too.
When the book begins, Theo is a Manhattan teenager living with his beloved mother after his abusive father skipped town, to their relief. His life is shattered when his mother dies under extremely traumatizing circumstances, propelling Theo into a series of different milieus to which he takes his troubles with him.
I read this mostly unspoiled, which was a very rewarding experience, so I’m putting the rest of the plot below a cut. Above the cut, I will just note a few things which readers might want to know about in advance.
Content notes: The dog lives. There is significant gay/bisexual content though a lot of the usual questions that brings up (“Canon or subtext?” “Do they survive?” “Is it a happily ever after?”) are hard to answer due to spoilery/complicated in-book circumstances. There is a lot of addiction, suicidality, and non-sexual child abuse/neglect.
Also, there are Russian characters who I am going to guess are probably not very accurate as I cannot recall a single instance of Russians I know thinking a book by a non-Russian author was accurate.
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osprey_archer just reviewed this; if you’ve read it, feel free to jump into the discussion in her comments.
All I knew going in was that it involved art forgery and that there was either canon gay or very heavy subtext. Consequently, I kept thinking that every teenage boy Theo had significant interactions was the relationship in question. First I thought it was Tom and had an “ugh, no” reaction. Then Andy became very important and I read on with increasing bewilderment at how the heck this relationship was going to end up romantic: some kind of “grew up hot?”
Enter Boris, at which point I instantly knew that the relationship was Theo/Boris. Also, my involvement with the book took a huge leap forward. Boris is a great, vivid character and for all his and Theo’s faults, I spent the entire rest of the book consumed with the desire for them to be together.
They have regular drunk/high sex as teenagers that they don’t discuss, so yes, that part is canon. It’s unclear whether Theo is bisexual or gay, but either way, he is in love with Boris (explicit canon) and in an incredible level of denial over that and, it turns out, much more.
Theo is a giant fuckup who does awful things, but I can’t dislike him when he loves Boris so much, and rescues Popchik, and takes Boris to meet Popchik years later. The whole Popper plot was so unexpectedly satisfying, especially as I was sure it was going to come to a tragic end.
The successive revelations of exactly how suicidal Theo has been all along were such gut-punches. Since I find it impossible to believe that he will ever get a competent therapist he actually talks to, I will just believe that he and Boris meet up regularly for intense sessions of love and sex, in between Boris living the rest of his life, which is so much bigger and broader than anything Theo would ever want.
I also really want to know what Pippa does with her life, from her own point of view. That is likely to be my other Yuletide request, along with “Boris/Theo post-book.”
The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
If you liked The Secret History, you will probably like this; if you didn’t, you probably won’t. Though the plots and most of the characters are completely different, the narrative voice is similar and there’s a hard-to-pin-down feel that’s also similar. If Richard Papen drove you up the wall, Theo Decker probably will too.
When the book begins, Theo is a Manhattan teenager living with his beloved mother after his abusive father skipped town, to their relief. His life is shattered when his mother dies under extremely traumatizing circumstances, propelling Theo into a series of different milieus to which he takes his troubles with him.
I read this mostly unspoiled, which was a very rewarding experience, so I’m putting the rest of the plot below a cut. Above the cut, I will just note a few things which readers might want to know about in advance.
Content notes: The dog lives. There is significant gay/bisexual content though a lot of the usual questions that brings up (“Canon or subtext?” “Do they survive?” “Is it a happily ever after?”) are hard to answer due to spoilery/complicated in-book circumstances. There is a lot of addiction, suicidality, and non-sexual child abuse/neglect.
Also, there are Russian characters who I am going to guess are probably not very accurate as I cannot recall a single instance of Russians I know thinking a book by a non-Russian author was accurate.
osprey_archer just reviewed this; if you’ve read it, feel free to jump into the discussion in her comments. All I knew going in was that it involved art forgery and that there was either canon gay or very heavy subtext. Consequently, I kept thinking that every teenage boy Theo had significant interactions was the relationship in question. First I thought it was Tom and had an “ugh, no” reaction. Then Andy became very important and I read on with increasing bewilderment at how the heck this relationship was going to end up romantic: some kind of “grew up hot?”
Enter Boris, at which point I instantly knew that the relationship was Theo/Boris. Also, my involvement with the book took a huge leap forward. Boris is a great, vivid character and for all his and Theo’s faults, I spent the entire rest of the book consumed with the desire for them to be together.
They have regular drunk/high sex as teenagers that they don’t discuss, so yes, that part is canon. It’s unclear whether Theo is bisexual or gay, but either way, he is in love with Boris (explicit canon) and in an incredible level of denial over that and, it turns out, much more.
Theo is a giant fuckup who does awful things, but I can’t dislike him when he loves Boris so much, and rescues Popchik, and takes Boris to meet Popchik years later. The whole Popper plot was so unexpectedly satisfying, especially as I was sure it was going to come to a tragic end.
The successive revelations of exactly how suicidal Theo has been all along were such gut-punches. Since I find it impossible to believe that he will ever get a competent therapist he actually talks to, I will just believe that he and Boris meet up regularly for intense sessions of love and sex, in between Boris living the rest of his life, which is so much bigger and broader than anything Theo would ever want.
I also really want to know what Pippa does with her life, from her own point of view. That is likely to be my other Yuletide request, along with “Boris/Theo post-book.”
The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
