Jumping Into Fall

Well this Monday is the first official day of fall, and already it’s been darker in the mornings and getting darker earlier in the evenings, yikes. The temps too are getting a bit crisper … at least here in North Country. As long as an early fall doesn’t actually mean an early winter, I’m okay about it. It makes for good reading weather, right? And goodness knows, there’s so many notable book releases out this season. I have various stacks around that need attention. I guess I can blame “The Goldfinch” for making me get behind. 

But I’m happy to say: this past week I reached my goal of finishing Donna Tartt’s epic 2013 novel, which I started in August, and then I just saw the movie of it, which unfortunately most critics panned. Ugh, but wait! For those who liked the book, the movie is indeed worthwhile. There are some beautifully shot scenes, and the music and acting in it are pretty good too. The 2.5 hour movie actually follows the novel fairly closely, except for the sequence of a couple events — the past and present jumping a bit differently a few times back and forth. Yet still the book’s themes are present and the feelings are there. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit though it’s not without flaws, nor does it fully match the novel — though not many movie adaptations can really do that. Still people in my row at the theater who had not read the book actually said they liked it and said they weren’t confused by its jumping timeline. So for them, it translated to the screen. While others might think it would’ve worked better as a TV miniseries, which perhaps could’ve given its themes more depth and focus.

For sure there is a lot stuffed into the nearly 800-page novel — which goes from New York to Vegas back to New York and then on to Amsterdam — and I likely avoided it when it came out because of its length. It’s true I was six years late to its release, but I came to love “The Goldfinch” just the same. I loved it for its story — about a boy named Theo who becomes orphaned after a terrible attack at a NYC museum and whose fate becomes tied up with a Dutch master’s painting — all the while he is grieving the loss of his mother and must find his way in the world. I loved all the various characters who Theo meets along the way: his adoptive family the Barbours — both the parents and kids — especially the brainy nerdy Andy he’s friends with; and Hobie — the antique restorer he comes to work for; and his wild Ukrainian friend Boris whom he meets in Las Vegas; and his love for Pippa, the girl at the museum who experienced much of what he did on that fateful day. As for Theo’s Dad and his girlfriend who move him out to Vegas, most times I wanted to strangle them for their gambling, druggy ways and how they treated the young, impressionable Theo. 

With the various characters and superb storytelling, “The Goldfinch” felt like a modern-day Dickens novel to me and I was in no rush to get through it. I marked the passages I liked, and I unsuspectedly fell into the story little by little: hook, line and sinker. Every time I started to feel one part was going on too long then something would happen and things would change and propel me along. There were some twists along the way — a character would get bumped off or Theo’s life would take an unfortunate turn (not unlike Oliver Twist) — that surprised me and I thought ‘uh-oh, here we go.’ 

Certainly there’s a lot of drugs, pills, and drinking in the story. Boris has a crazy influence on Theo and all the imbibing and addictions might grow a bit tiresome to readers. It all feels so unhealthy — get me a bottle of water! But Theo is certainly no saint in the story, he puts himself in trouble numerous times — when he sells fake antiques as real for one — that you sort of want to shake him, yet still you go on pulling for him. And while some readers have said they never thought the book’s debauchery in Vegas would ever end, I got more antsy at the long ending in Amsterdam (after the action scene & resolution) — where it starts philosophizing about truth & untruth and death & art, when I just wanted the story to play out … or at least something more from Pippa. 

Still I think it’s the longest novel I’ve ever read that I didn’t get bored with and that I really liked — its themes about art and love and grief captured me and I was dazzled by it in many ways. In interviews, Donna Tartt has said she tries to make her novels read with “density and speed” and indeed “The Goldfinch” is filled with lots of detail and information but still flows along fairly steadily and easily. The pages turn. Of course, some edits would’ve been all right in spots, but I made it to the other end just the same. It’s my tome read of the year! — and makes for an excellent paperweight as well.

Next up, I finished the audiobook of Ling Ma’s 2018 debut novel “Severance.” I was in the mood for good dystopian lit and this fit the bill perfectly. The story is narrated by Candace Chen — a twenty-something woman who works at a Manhattan specialty book publisher coordinating the production of Bibles from China when an epidemic called Shen Fever hits, which renders its victims zombie-like, repeating old routines — like setting the table over and over again — until their bodies fall apart. 

Candace’s life leading up to the Shen Fever epidemic — her past with her immigrant parents and then her boyfriend in New York — alternates chapters with her present when she’s with a group of survivors led by a power-crazy leader heading for a Facility in Pennsylvania. Uh-oh, you’ll want to stay tuned to see what happened to her life in New York, and whether she sticks with her rescuers during the apocalypse. 

There are some graphic descriptions of raids the survivors go on — and interesting critiques to the story about capitalism and working life — regarding her sacrificing parents, and her writer boyfriend who doesn’t want to work dead-end jobs, to Candace who carries on with her corporate job despite everyone else eventually leaving or becoming “fevered.” She’s devoted to routines not unlike those who become inflicted.    

Candace turns out to be quite the nuanced protagonist — blunt but also somewhat humorous at times whose real pursuit is photography, which she puts on her blog NY Ghost that documents the early stages of the epidemic. Because of her, the story held my interest from beginning to end, though perhaps I wanted a little more from the very ending, which is left a bit open-ended. Despite that, I’ll be curious to see what author Ling Ma, who teaches at the University of Chicago, writes next. For now, it seems like she’ll be touring with the book at some festivals this fall. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and if so, what did you think?