David Copperfield by Charles Dickens – Review

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Learning to Love Dickens.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

Until David Copperfield, I had never finished a Charles Dickens book. As a teenager I managed three pages of Great Expectations before throwing it down in a huff. I must have really hated those three pages, because I went the next ten years convinced, not just that I didn’t like Great Expectations, but that I didn’t like Charles Dickens.

This was a fairly stupid thing to believe considering I’d only read around 0.0001% of his total work, but it was one that stuck for a long time. It only took two pages of David Copperfield for me to realize that I’d been missing out. His words can practically produce sparks in your brain.

A young David Copperfield is orphaned and left in the charge of his evil step-father. We watch him run away, come back, fall in love, make some intensely stupid decisions, and, finally, grow up. Think Harry Potter, if instead of becoming a wizard he tries to become a lawyer and novelist. It’s also much more interesting than that last sentence makes it sound.

When older novels are fun, there are normally some hefty conditions. “Fun, but“s, put another way. Classics can suffer from the sheer amount of time that’s passed since their release, and the humour comes across as antiquated and cliche. Dickens, however, is funny, not in spite of the age he comes from but because of it. He saw as much absurdity in the Victorian society as a modern man who time traveled would do.

Money and its numerous stresses keep the novel relevant to our modern bank-and-debt dominated society. There’s a great moment where Mr Micawber gives some basic but much needed financial (Micawber doesn’t listen to himself in this regard), for instance:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Tears are shed (frequently). David is almost angelic when he’s young, but the slow creep of maturity mixed with naivete let him be taken advantage of constantly. It’s sad to see him become more aware of predatory ways, but his innocence withers slowly, so it’s like a child learning that Father Christmas isn’t real over the course of decades.

Dickens digs through the archaic aspects of his society and finds the universal struggles of his characters, who are obviously archetypal but bubbling with enough energy and complexity that you have become intensely invested in them by the end of the book. Archaic institutions likes debtors prisons and Doctors’ Commons feel convoluted yet familiar, and while houses made from boats and ridiculous names might come across as over-the-top, but part of the fun of this novel is letting the melodrama wash over you.

It’s gooey and occasionally sickeningly sweet, but in a good way, like chocolate. The bad guys might as well twirl their mustaches and many of the good characters practically have halos, but there are also keen observations about the horrors of industrial life and the nature of modern existence; think Dostoevsky combined with Disney. There’s no denying that’s this is an over the top novel, but it’s bloody fun too if you’ve got some patience.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

“How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly?”

In The Buried Giant, an elderly Briton couple wander through Anglo-Saxon England searching for a son they barely remember. The country seems cursed. People are forgetting their lives almost as fast as they live them. Memories still seep through the mist, though, and sow confusion in a world that has stopped wallowing in the past or dreaming of the future.

This book needs to be read with careful expectations. An elderly couple on a journey wouldn’t be an extraordinary premise for a standard realist literary novel; put dragons round a corner, however, and readers begin to wonder why the narrative are focused on more mundaner aspects of the world. I appreciate anything which bends genre, however, so I was still excited; unfortunately this novel was, for me, stronger in theory than execution.

Stories which find a good balance between the ordinary and supernatural are rare: The Magicians by Lev Grossman; Among Others by Jo Walton; Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke; arguably a vast swath of the work of David Mitchell. Ishiguro, however, through a combination of frustrating dialogue and poor pacing, just doesn’t make the list.

Like in his more realist writing, Ishiguro’s prose is understated, almost flat. The narrative of fading memories is tied into the physical details of the landscapes Axl and Beatrice travel across, as everything outside their immediate periphery fades away. This dreamlike vagueness creates a calm atmosphere, but characters talk with a specificity that undermines the mysteriousness of the prose, so the dialogue feels out of place with the setting. And there is a LOT of dialogue.

Characters act as mouthpieces so Ishiguro to explain anything of narrative or symbolic significance, and this is done with the same flat tone they use to discuss the sun, or never-dying love, or dragons. It’s as though Ishiguro is worried that we won’t pick up on something’s significance unless it’s explicitly discussed in-universe. As such, characters lose their distinctiveness (with the exception of Sir Gaiwan, who pops about around a third through and is the only character who has a unique voice, helped by the fact that he has sections in first-person) and I was unengaged from the book over, and over, and over again.

It’s not just dialogue that feels inconsistent. The rules of this universe are constantly bent on authorial whims. Characters’ memories return when it’s dramatically convenient, and it seems arbitrary as to which memories vanished in the first place. As such, everyone feel molded around the story Ishiguro is trying to tell, rather than fleshed-out people with agency.

Using fantasy as a backdrop can allow authors to create magic and legends which add a sense of grandeur and power and let them stretch our imaginations. Fantasy where internal consistency is disregarded, however, makes a novel which is utterly lacking in consequence. as they don’t remind us of people. The Buried Giant, in my opinion, felt like the latter.

There’s a telling moment later in the book where a climatic sword-fight ends in a single blow. I had heard Ishiguro talk about the influence of Akira Kurosawa on his action-scenes and the Japanese storytelling tradition of tension before a battle being far more important than the dazzle of combat itself. This is fine in theory, and could make an understated novel ramp up in excitement quickly. However, the clash finished so fast I was merely left wondering what the hell had happened. I went back, re-read the page, and thought, “That’s it?”

Unfortunately, “That’s it?” is a good way to describe my reaction to The Buried Giant as a whole. It felt like a long series of anti-climaxes.

Slade House by David Mitchell

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“Tonight feels like a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever.”

Slade House is a lovely looking home. People come from all over to visit, and it has two wonderful hosts. There’s a catch, though: it shouldn’t exist, and the people who enter never leave.

If you feel like you’ve heard that summary before, that’s the point.

It’s safe to say haunted houses are firmly established as the great places for creepiness in stories. They’re the go-to for ghosts. With Slade House, though, Mitchell veers closer to the fantasy of Lev Grossman than, say, the difficult to comprehend horrors of House of Leaves, which may surprise readers due to the setting.

This isn’t a frightening novel; it’s not really trying to be. It wants to excite, and does so with spellbinding ease. The pages practically turn by themselves. Originally posted to Twitter, it’s tightly-plotted and fast-paced, with some great twists and carefully developed characters.

Mitchell’s eye for convincing details from modern England is sharp, and he smoothly draws you into well-trod ground by taking conventions you think you know and twisting them just enough that your expectations are subverted.

The prose is less ornate than in previous Mitchell works, but still lively and occasionally profound.

The characters are engaging, of various classes and temperaments, and feel fresh, as they are far outside of the traditional haunted-house-protagonists template. It’s gratifying to watch as these characters navigate Slade House thanks to this uniqueness, as you just don’t know how they will react

For example, an autistic teenage boy on Valium finds his nightmares coming to life. How could that not be fascinating?

So why is it so unsatisfying?

Despite its strengths, Slade House is unambitious when it comes to anything outside of of trying to excite the reader. It’s like fast food when you were expecting a three-course meal: still tasty, but lacking in nutrition, and unsatisfying if you were licking your lips in anticipation of prime-rib steak. The narrative and thematic weight which anchors Mitchell’s other books just isn’t here.

It’s difficult to examine why I was left so unsatisfied without going into the ending, so consider this a warning for spoilers.

Having your supernatural menace be defeated stopped by a never-before-seen hero entirely unknown to the reader is far too close to a Deus Ex Machina for my tastes. Marinus’ appearance may not be surprising to readers who have already finished The Bone clocks, but it’s tonally inconsistent and jargon-loaded.

With such an incredibly powerful protagonist to end with, events which lead up to the character Marinus’ become comparatively pointless. He’s a psychic demi-god, basically; we aren’t relieved when he defeats evil because he expect it.

Normal people don’t matter to the climax of this book. Prior attempts to save themselves without magical assistance were made to seem important, like the dropping of a character’s hairpin, but compared to Marinus’ overwhelming superpowers they simply weren’t.

Any clever solution is shoved aside in favour of psycho-voltage explosions.

The Grayers were particularly fearsome antagonists because their methods were mystical, but their desire for immortality was understandable. Extraordinary people with selfish motivations being defeated everyday people with extraordinary motivations (i.e. love, peace, and all that jazz) would have been thematically and narratively satisfying.

Instead, we get a psychic showdown. Exciting, but not particularly rewarding.

This ending, put simply, lets out all the novel’s carefully built tension and makes it flop like a deflated balloon.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

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“I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, thank God, no terror.”

The Turn of the Screw tells a ghost story set in a haunted house. Good. Our protagonist is a woman who has been given charge of two unsettlingly perfect children, and she may or may not be going mad. Great!

So what happened? How did Henry James create the literary equivalent of Nyquil out of such an exciting premise?

There is, buried deep, a chilling story here, with plot-twists, difficult choices, and keen lines which express the constantly frayed emotions of our dismayed protagonist. This would be easier to review if nothing had happened plot-wise, because then the utter boredom a book as fast-paced and psychologically insightful as this would have had a stylistic point that could be blamed.

The problem is that sentences wind and curl around what they’re trying to say until you’re too distracted to care anymore. After ten pages, you’re confused; after fifteen, you’re irritated; after twenty, you’re asleep.

James keeps you guessing as to whether the threat is coming from the supernatural or the narrator’s own mind, and you can reverse-engineer the popularization of a number of modern horror tropes to this novel. But maybe its success is why it’s such a slog to finish now, despite the tiny length. If so many modern stories hadn’t plundered the best elements, there might be more to distract from the writing itself; instead, this book becomes yet another example of Seinfeld is Unfunny.

It’s not simply a product of its time, though. There are authors just as verbose who have managed sophisticated, layered writing without accidentally creating a cure for insomnia. For example, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Eliot are all enhanced by their layered and elevated prose, not smothered in it. As it is, The Turn of the Screw’s fascinating premise was crushed under the weight of James’ waffling.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

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“Beware of asking people to question what’s real and what isn’t. They may reach conclusions you didn’t see coming.”

The Bone Clocks is a decade-spanning fantasy novel about the lies and justifications that result in evil. It has psychics, dimension hopping, and immortal soul-suckers, but everything turns back to the question of why people hurt each other.

Age and its numerous horrors haunt a large cast of characters, and constant time-jumps means their rapid declines become a worry for the reader too. Years fall away like leaves from a dying tree until, before you know it, the people Mitchell is making you care about are rotting in the ground. This gives the previously mentioned immortal soul-suckers some nice thematic resonance.

The characters are, as should be expected with Mitchell, the sturdiest part of this novel’s foundations aside from the handsome prose. Mitchell can make someone flawed but empathetic, and in this the case, the nastier they are the more fun they seem to be to read. More than once I thought, “How have I grown to love this character? They’re a bastard.” They’re rarely unrepentant bastards, though. Combine this internal intrigue with Mitchell’s sharp sense of humour and it’s easy to stay interested.

Your expectations for each section are adjusted as the stories go on. For example, a war reporter was the narrator in one of strongest parts of the novel, but not because of firefights or battle scenes. His struggles back in rural England were about parenthood, and addressed the fear of losing a child in a way that was visceral. I felt my stomach tense over and over again, and this all informed the rest of the novel (which explores a number of strained parental relationships) in interesting ways.

There’s a seriousness about the fantasy narrative that make moments comic relief welcome. The rude, self-obsessed author was an on-the-nose parody of Martin Amis (Mitchell has denied this… but I don’t believe him), and his desperation and self-pity reminded me of Timothy Cavendish’s farcical appearance in Cloud Atlas; the former’s story was more poignant than the latter, though, due to the sad transformation we watched Hershey go through as he aged.

There’s not a lack of personality on display here, then. The problems come back to the plot and pacing.

The structure is less controlled than in Mitchell’s other works. Only the fifth section delves into this War, which is more disconnected from everyday life than the rest of the novel (even the sixth part’s dystopian future), although Mitchell wisely keeps the stakes in this supernatural conflict low scale, at least relative to most fantasy. There are, fortunately, no feeble references to magical macguffins which might destroy the world: a Capital-W-War is ongoing over the right of a small group of powerful people to prey on the weak for sustenance, and this ties back to the way death looms above human lives. It’s interesting, but rushed. The descriptions are less grounded. Instead of just pushing people away with their minds, or something equally simple (if hokey), “[Horologists] pour psychovoltage into a neurobolas and kinetic it [their] assailants”. It feels as though you’ve been blasted into a parody of the earlier, far more restrained musings on the supernatural.

I’m all for ambitious fantasy, but there has to be a balance which The Bone Clocks never manages. The quotidian and the supernatural are firmly kept apart until the later sections, where they merge unsatisfactorily. This is particularly frustrating as Mitchell excelled at combining the genres in other novels. Still, I don’t think a writer who melded the supernatural and mundane as well as the writer of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet would make a change so obviously jarring without specific intentions in mind. The over-the-top elements could even be read as a challenge to “traditional literature” readers who might normally dismiss a novel solely because of its genre. Mitchell would have known all of these elements would alienate people, even if he was hoping they would meld more smoothly than they did.

When it doesn’t work it really doesn’t work, but for the majority of its pages I was enthralled. It’s flawed, but not much more so than Ghostwritten—Mitchell’s first novel, often cited as his second-best—as that novel had a jarring sci-fi element, which paralleled my problems with this book. This is a roundabout way of saying I’d rather dive into a very flawed but ambitious novel by Mitchell than a more consistent work by 90% of the living authors I’ve read.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

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“It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.”

If I were forced to define Infinite Jest in a sentence I would say: It’s the saddest comedy you’ll ever read. That might sound like a contradiction, but it’s also what makes this book special; serious is, after all, not the opposite of funny. This is a powerful, playful, and mind-stretchingly smart examination of addiction and melancholy which is far more fun than its length and vocabulary give it any right to be.

The plot, like many of the characters, is broken into a very strange shape. Page-long paragraphs detail characters’ obsessions, and the narrator sounds like a lexical-prodigy who has been given a mixture of dope and crystal meth. The majority of the action takes place in the late 2000s, and time has been subsidized; corporations bid to name years after themselves. The Statue of Liberty now displays ads.

This is a novel with Things To Say about modern society’s desperation to escape boredom through entertainment, and that might sound like a tedious subject by definition; in fact, the chapter-long diversions and endless footnotes make it seem like Wallace is almost challenging you to view it as such. Trust that your time won’t be thrown away, though, and you’ll see it’s been made with a combination of fearsome talent and moral fire.

The strength of the language is hard to overstate. While some of his short-fiction can be just as meticulous, nothing else I’ve read by Wallace comes close to this in terms of raw feeling and perception. I felt like Infinite Jest showed me the neuroses of the world laid bare:

“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”

While who might be perceived as the main character shifts constantly, the most important in my eyes is Don Gately. He’s a huge, square-headed ex-burglar and current addict who’s trying desperately to believe in sentiment again and put his past behind him. In a novel filled with sly wordplay and postmodern trickery, Gately’s desperation to stay sober stands gives the book a heartfelt centre that keeps more playful elements in check.

Whether or not you’ll appreciate this book, though, may come down to patience. The story’s fractured structure begins to make sense as the final sections reveal what might have been happening in the opening scene, and send you racing back to the start for clarification. It is, in other words, structured like a loop. The end is the beginning is the end. It almost demands rereads, and with its size this will be a turn-off for many.

I think it’s worth the effort, though.

[SPOILERS]

I did some head-scratching to see if I could work out the ending on my own. That’s part of the fun for me in a book-slash-puzzle like this one. Although I’ve since read a few of the treatises on this hulk of a book since I jotted this down, these were my initial impressions:

[REALLY, SPOILERS]

Hal is able to feel, finally, but has been trapped in his own mind, likely by the potent DMZ, and is unable to communicate — except, perhaps, with Don Gately through the wraith of his father. They go on an expedition inspired by J. O. Incandenza to find the Master copy, buried inside his skull. The Separatists already have it. Orin had surrendered his mother to make his own torture end, and so she had already given up the location of the Mad Stork’s grave in the Great Concavity.

Whether or not Wallace’s dystopic-vision of our present falls depends on how much you trust in our ability to resist temptation, and so everyone will have a different ending playing inside of their own mind.

There’s something beautiful in that.

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

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So… this was unusual.

Alexander Portnoy is a confused man ranting to his psychiatrist about how he lives in a state of unfulfillment and desire, obsessed with sex and his own guilt. This book is like listening to this narcissistic, sex-obsessed asshole for three-hundred pages. Your tolerance may understandably vary.

It is funny, though.

I finished this three weeks ago, but kept putting off writing a single word about it. Pathos bleeds out over the pages, but I couldn’t recomend reading this because it was just so one-note. There are dirty jokes mixed with a weirdly affecting anecdote over, and over, and over again, and if that’s your bag you’re in for a treat, but I got the bored of the humour after a hundred pages. The next two-hundred plus were Roth beating (off) a dead horse.

The moment which best sums up the novel comes when Portnoy’s sister becomes dismayed for the victims of the holocaust. It’s a comparatively serious, heart-wrenching scene. His selfishness, narcisism and self-loathing results in the heart-breaking line, “she sheds her tears for six million, or so I think, while I shed mine only for myself. Or so I think.”

This is immediately followed by the next chapter:

CUNT CRAZY.

Did I mention that when I was fifteen I took it out of my pants and whacked off on the 107 bus from New York?

Portnoy’s Complaint is like a night out in a drunken, messy part of town: it can be hilarious, but after all is said and done your head hurts and you feel dirty.

The Plague by Albert Camus

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

Oran is a dreary port city where boredom disguises itself as contentment. Inhabitants go about their lives as though in a daze; not uncomfortable, not joyous. This is a place of greys.

And then the plague comes. All gates are shut, and the town is sealed. No one will be leaving for a very long time. Uncountable rat corpses are coverings streets and doorsteps, men and women are coughing up blood, and thousands are dying. We follow Rieux, a doctor trying to do what he can to help, as lives are changed and the question of whether or not you have lived well becomes a much more immediate concern.As you can, this isn’t an always a cheerful read. It is engaging, though, despite being almost a polemic (or, to be more blunt, preachy), but as this is Camus that’s rather like complaining water is wet. The dialogue felt stilted and forced at times, though, but how much of that can be blamed on the translation from French I couldn’t say. The characters are well-drawn, with some fascinating motivations and painful backgrounds. I was actually surprised at how personal this often feels considering the heady subject matter, as individual worries are again and again at the centre of concern rather than society wide sweeping change.

All stories come together to give readers a message that sounds extremely trite summarised. Big truths often do, though. Camus makes us understand that only individual sacrifice can stop the plague (which, as might be obvious, is very much a metaphor), to stop pain from spreading if you possibly can. Heroism isn’t something that should be glorified to Camus, it’s merely what must be done. Ordinary people have no choice but to become exceptional, or their friends and family will go through gruesome ends. In fact, friends and family might die either way. But, even if defeat’s inevitable, we should still try to be good.

This isn’t what I could exactly call an exciting read in the way The Stranger was, something which I raced through and made me question the way I looked at the world. It’s less direct than that, and as such maybe less impactful. All I can say is that three-hundred pages of misery somehow made me feel uplifted, and that’s an accomplishment.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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“…she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see…”

Some novels give you interesting ideas to think about. Some create an entertaining stories. Some do an interesting mixture of both of these things. A rare kind of book, however, can transport you into a time, place, and body that are far away from anything you would normally experience, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurtston achieves this with ease and grace.

Hurston creates the humid, vibrant landscapes of South Florida through a dramatic third-person prose style that borders on mythical, but it’s dialogue – phonetic, funny, and raw – that lets her truly shine. Crafting insightful, funny conversations that still propel narrative almost looks easy when she does it. Almost.

The characters are flawed, even the most lovable: the protagonist can seem self-centered; Tea-Cake is affectionate and funny, but his temper and gambling can make him almost dangerous; her other love interests are cruel, but understandable. That’s why it’s possible to really believe and care about them (“loving” characters can be a trite phrase used to describe mere affection, but in this case it’s appropriate), and one of the reasons why I almost didn’t want the book to end.

I was turned onto this book by an essay by Zadie Smith, who once again is scarily perceptive. Her thoughts as to why the love of Tea-Cake and Janie rings so true despite the deluge of poor romance in a lot of otherwise strong fiction, for example:

“[T]he choice of each other is experienced not as desperation, but as discovery, and the need felt on both sides causes them joy, not shame[.]”

Put simply, what makes this novel truly special is that Hurtston’s characters feel as organic in the way they interact and clash. This is a love story with conflict and heartbreak, but completely devoid of cliche and over-sentimentality. That’s something rare and fantastic.

V2 | Review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (with too many mentions of The Secret History)

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“It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.”

Note: I accidentally overrode a version of this after posting. Thankfully, WordPress saved the post. Oopsie.

As always, I’m years late in reading a “trendy” book. When The Goldfinch came out in 2013, the hype was (in the tiny world of book-publishing) enormous. Untrendy confession: with an author I’d never read before, and didn’t know if I was likely to enjoy, it just looked too long for me to bother. I don’t mind chunky novels, but they’re an investment: hours upon days upon weeks of time. I want to have some assurance that it will, quite plainly, be worth it.

The Secret History, which I picked up having heard great things, had me in a pleasant vice grip. The characters were both admirable and despicable, and you were drawn into their lives with a sense of fascination which mirrored the protagonists’. It had a clear-sighted view of class, addiction, and thoughtless cruelty with a strong, ornate style of writing, which made the earnestness of the protagonist’s refreshing. It had an obsession with Ancient Greek and Roman myths and writings which mirrored my own (harbored since around age six). It had a carefully built sense of place: the university felt inviting due, but cold. It was really, really good.

With so many of my own favourite topics covered, along with some beautiful, ornate writing, The Secret History unsurprisingly became one of my favourite novels. Tartt had earned my trust. So into The Goldfinch I dove…

There’s an explosion, a theft, and a panic stricken young man, living with horrendous guilt and anxiety, named Theodore Decker.

There’s a breathless pace (despite numerous plot diversions) which makes The Goldfinch hard to stop reading. Character twists, a great eye for strange details, and a smart sense for just the moment a reader might start to mean that the common abstract sections examining art and the meaning of beauty don’t leave the plot in a quagmire which the novel would struggle to escape from. These are all great qualities, which was frustrating while writing this review as it made it harder to pinpoint why I still got far less out of this The Secret History.

Maybe it’s unfair to make direct comparisons to another novel; maybe The Goldfinch should be evaluated on its own merits. I’m not sure. All I am certain of is that, possibly due to the artifice and coincidences that everything hinges on in The Goldfinch, many sections feel artificial. I didn’t notice at the time but looking back it’s glaring. Everything hinges on coincidences, which may be why many call this novel Dickensian, but you end up feeling almost pulled along from section to section. Reading it was like going on an exceptionally well-made rollercoaster rather than taking a wander through unknown woods, which was the case with The Secret History. It’s as though—if she doesn’t explicitly state themes, or direct your attention carefully during ambiguous interactions—Tartt is fatally afraid you’ll miss something. Half the fun of a novel comes from what you find beneath their surface. By making things so direct, Tartt weakens the ability of the reader to become truly immersed.

While our protagonist is a subdued introvert, side characters are over the top and extremely endearing. Boris, a wild young Russian, is extremely likeable but dangerous, and when Theo becomes friends with him you can tell this will mean trouble. Tartt captures the dynamic of intense young male friendships shockingly well: the bonding over mischief and danger, the in-jokes, the secret languages, the itch to do something that could end incredibly badly just because you can. Hobie is a charming, fuzzy headed furniture dealer who comes across in his benevolence almost Father Christmasesque—still, he has his complications and blind spots. There’s also a love interest named Pippa who unfortunately never feels quite as fleshed out as those around her; her role is by design to be mysterious, but I never got a sense of revelation about who she was even when I got the sense I was supposed to.

The Secret History’s cast were emotionally stunted narcissists, but you would want to spend actual time with people from The Goldfinch. That’s part of why I wish I loved this book instead of just like it: I want to be compelled to come back and live with the characters again. If The Secret History was cold, with an emotionally reserved cast of characters and an obsession with the past—not to mention heaps of actual snow—the Goldfinch is warm. It’s the warmth of a house with a fire going after you’ve come in from rain. If that sounds annoyingly abstract, I understand, but trying to convey the mood of a novel almost 900 pages long and taking place over such a long period is necessarily vague. Theo lives in a world with people and places he defines by whether or not they instill a sense of comfort in him. He’s searching for a place that lets him feel like he belongs, continuingly going back to a kindly old Hobie.

I probably sound like I don’t like the book, but I do. A lot. There are some beautiful reflections about art and the way it can impact your world, for example:

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”

Maybe I got the secret whisper from The Secret History and not The Goldfinch because it appealed to my personal interests more, or maybe because I value ambiguity more than straight-headed storytelling. Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think The Goldfinch is a very strong, well-paced novel with a great atmosphere, but it’s so on-the-nose with its themes that it become difficult to connect with on a truly personal level, which is a shame. It yells instead of whispering.