What I've Read: The Goldfinch and The Fault in Our Stars
It's rare for me to read a book that's very popular at the time that it is popular -- not because I dislike popular things, but because I am too cheap to buy books that I can't find at my trusty Half Price Bookstore. After many people recommended it to me and A Beautiful Mess decided to make it their book club selection for May, I made an exception for The Goldfinch, using birthday gift money to snatch up a lovely new hardback copy. I actually found The Fault in Our Stars new at Half Price Books during their 20% off Memorial Day Weekend sale, so I snatched it up at the lower price, intent on reading the book before seeing the film, which opens this month.
So now you can see that my motivations for book selection are very deep and academic.
The Fault in Our Stars and The Goldfinch both deal with the arbitrariness of death and destruction. I don't want to give any spoilers because spoilers are some of the only things I truly hate, but I will say that each book finds some hope in the midst of death and destruction through art. In Fault, literature becomes a kind of saving grace time and again -- the first-person narrator writes with self-conscious knowledge of the genre of "cancer books," exploiting some elements of the genre while craftily side-stepping others. Literary references are everywhere, and a major plot point concerns the protagonist's relationship with a book. The title inverts a quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and the main characters refer to themselves in similarly Shakespearean terms. One particularly moving scene involves one character reciting Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to the other. These literary allusions help the main characters to make sense of their own suffering, while also providing a source of beauty and comfort.
In Goldfinch, hope dwells in the literal piece of art that gives the book its name and through the antique furniture which Theo, the protagonist, comes to cherish. Literary references are always close-at-hand in this work as well, with one of the most unlikely characters reading intense Russian classics one minute and making Harry Potter references the next. Theo also loves to read -- and, importantly, to write. Both Goldfinch and Fault feature first-person narrators who make a point of letting the reader know that the book we are holding has come from their pen and no one else's. For each protagonist, the completed manuscript is personal therapy, love-letter, and a reaching-out for connection with other humans. The act of writing becomes its own kind of saving grace in the midst of chaos and blind fate.
In many ways, these two books are quite different from each other. The Goldfinch is a huge, winding tome that surely takes its place among modern literary classics; The Fault in Our Stars is a quick-reading piece of young-adult romance. But both view the horrors of death and destruction full in the face and both help us to think about how to grow up and maybe even thrive in the face of uncontrollable darkness, urging us to cling to the beauty of love, friendship, and art, and to make beautiful things of our own.
Have any of you read either one of these books? What did you think?
So now you can see that my motivations for book selection are very deep and academic.
The Fault in Our Stars and The Goldfinch both deal with the arbitrariness of death and destruction. I don't want to give any spoilers because spoilers are some of the only things I truly hate, but I will say that each book finds some hope in the midst of death and destruction through art. In Fault, literature becomes a kind of saving grace time and again -- the first-person narrator writes with self-conscious knowledge of the genre of "cancer books," exploiting some elements of the genre while craftily side-stepping others. Literary references are everywhere, and a major plot point concerns the protagonist's relationship with a book. The title inverts a quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and the main characters refer to themselves in similarly Shakespearean terms. One particularly moving scene involves one character reciting Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to the other. These literary allusions help the main characters to make sense of their own suffering, while also providing a source of beauty and comfort.
Fabritius's The Goldfinch 1654
In Goldfinch, hope dwells in the literal piece of art that gives the book its name and through the antique furniture which Theo, the protagonist, comes to cherish. Literary references are always close-at-hand in this work as well, with one of the most unlikely characters reading intense Russian classics one minute and making Harry Potter references the next. Theo also loves to read -- and, importantly, to write. Both Goldfinch and Fault feature first-person narrators who make a point of letting the reader know that the book we are holding has come from their pen and no one else's. For each protagonist, the completed manuscript is personal therapy, love-letter, and a reaching-out for connection with other humans. The act of writing becomes its own kind of saving grace in the midst of chaos and blind fate.
In many ways, these two books are quite different from each other. The Goldfinch is a huge, winding tome that surely takes its place among modern literary classics; The Fault in Our Stars is a quick-reading piece of young-adult romance. But both view the horrors of death and destruction full in the face and both help us to think about how to grow up and maybe even thrive in the face of uncontrollable darkness, urging us to cling to the beauty of love, friendship, and art, and to make beautiful things of our own.
Have any of you read either one of these books? What did you think?
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