The Goldfinch - lost my mojo and not sure whether to carry on

[theforceawakens]

I'm up to page 473.

I loved the book until Theo arrived back in New York. Now I'm bored with furniture restoration and descriptions of varnish smells.

Is it worth carrying on or should I just give up? I haven't picked it up in four weeks and need to know whether to consign to the shelf of books I'll never finish or dust it off and give it another crack.

As others have said the first part is better than the second. However, it's worth putting up with a lack of editing and plough through to the end. I found its main problem was it was unnecessarily long and if she had sharpened up the revelations it could have remained compulsive reading. It was a Pulitzer Prize winner but nowhere as good as the recent winner by Anthony Doerr - All The Light We Cannot See. That was enthralling, thought provoking and I didn't want it to end.

Well, I was a hater and would say jack it in now. It gets worse, not better. The first chunk in New York is brilliant and from Vegas it's all downhill, second bit in New York, as you say, is all descriptions of wood.

hackmum - weirdly, I didn't hate A Death in the Family either, I just found it dreary and soporific where others rhapsodised that it was mesmeric and hypnotic. I kind of see what he was doing - showing the way the petty details can stay with us in the most extraordinary situations and even subsume those memories - but that's not exactly new and has been done much better by Joyce, Woolf etc.

Apparently, his first wife made a documentary after the second or third volume giving her version of events...

I quite liked the Vegas section and the return to NY. for me it's the adult bit that I struggled with, particularly the last chapter or so when nothing happens and it all gets a bit navel-gazing and self indulgent. IMVHO, if course

It's a shame you've stopped because reading about how the relationship between Boris and Theo has changed (which you would have got to soon) was one of the best things about this book, imho.

I found it dull and a tedious read.

lalalonglegs: "I just found it dreary and soporific where others rhapsodised that it was mesmeric and hypnotic."

Ha, yes. That was pretty much my view. Also I don't really believe he remembered those petty details, I think he just invented them. In fact, I think he just wrote the whole thing and then went back and inserted stuff about draining his coffee cup and putting his cigarette out. Probably had about six set phrases ready to copy and paste, depending on whether he was making a coffee, drinking a coffee, lighting a cigarette or putting it out.