Reviews

• Muito bom

  Excelente

• 表紙の黄金鶸が語りかけるものは？

  この本の表紙がいい。剥がされた包装紙の奥から覗く一羽の黄金鶸。 主人公の少年テオが美術館から持ち出した小さな名画の一部が見える。 美術館に展示された絵ではない、自分の手中にある一枚の名画である。 金持や芸術家が住むマンハッタン。ラスベガス郊外の空虚な砂漠のタウン。アムステルダムの裏社会。 舞台はドラマティックに展開する。一人称の軽い語り口、エンタメ要素もたっぷり。でも著者の思惑は決して軽くない。 千ページ余りのこの長編は、The Tale of Genji源氏物語やhaiku俳句まで登場し、航空券の内容や電話帳の貸倉庫の転載まである。 細部への視覚的なこだわりは映画的で、何かへのオマージュか既視感を感じる。あちこちに広がる等質な視線は意図的で、 オークションのアンティックの椅子も空港のプラステックの椅子もその重要性は同じ、という著者の言葉に通じる。 黄金鶸が大切なのは、それが美術館の名画だからではないと著者は言う。たとえそれが複製画であっても同じだと。 両親を失くして、精いっぱい生きる少年テオの成長物語。 ざっくり言えばそうだが、人は誰もがまっすぐ成長できるわけではない。 小説前半の健気なテオも、後半ではいつしか自分をごまかす大人になっている。 偽りの恋愛。偽りの美術品売買。自分を偽るためのドラッグ。だまし続ける人生。 それは大嫌いな父親の姿そのもの。しかしその偽りの生活は、隠し持つ名画のせいでもある。 誰にも打ち明けられない秘密を抱えて、どうしてまっとうに生きていけるのか？ 重要な役回りとして級友のボリスが登場する。ロシア人の父親は世界を渡り歩く油田採掘工でアル中。 母親は窓から飛び降り自殺。ボリスは父親の暴力には耐えるしかない。 著者の好きな言葉は「unwholesome不健全」だというが、なるほど１３歳のテオとボリスの生活は不健全そのもの。 しかし社会規範を超えたプリミティブなボリスの価値観とエネルギーが、テオの傷心を癒すことなる。 ふたりのボーイズラブがさりげなく描かれる。それにしても、いったいあの絵はどうするの？と読者は絶えず気にかかる。 絵のことを打ち明けないボリスとの友情は本物なの？ しかしその疑問は思わぬ形で解決するが、本作のお楽しみなので、ここでは触れない。 この小説がピューリツァ賞にふさわしいかは別として、１７世紀の黄金鶸の絵を、みごと２１世紀に甦らせたことは間違いない。 ボリスは、「ほかのたくさんの黄金鶸から、この絵の黄金鶸を見分けられる」と言う。またテオは、画家が黄金鶸を描くその場に自分が居合せたら「この黄金鶸の鎖をきりはなそう。たとえそのせいでこの画が描かれなかったとしても」と語る。ふたりにとっては、この黄金鶸は単なる黄金鶸ではないく、一羽の個別な「あの黄金鶸」なのである。著者は、芸術の力は個人的な囁きに始まるという。表紙の黄金鶸は「私を知ってる？」と読者にも囁く。しかし、その囁きは、絵画のGoldfinchの囁きであるばかりか、ドナ・タルトの小説the Goldfinchの囁きのようでもある。

• epic! unputdownable! Classic!

  I bought a paperback one right after I finished reading it on Kindle as I wanted to understand it better and I loved all the characters in the book. It is worth reading multiple times.

• 原書まで買ってしまいました。

  原作本に対する読者コメントも気になり、訳本は高いので原書かっちゃいました。頑張って読みます！

• A page turner!

  Beautifully written novel. I enjoyed the details and the story very much.

• Cheap

  Arrived on time and in excellent condition．Highly recommeded!

• 面白かったけど

  映画の方は日本で公開されないのでしょうか。ずっと楽しみに待っているのですが、どうもアメリカでの評価がいまいちだったようです。

• あのKingでも珍しい950ページ以上の長編を手に取る

  Donna Tartt（1963～）と言う作家については、この本を知るまでまったく聞いたことがなかった。またこの本の題名ともなっている「The Goldfinch」と言う有名な絵画、33.5cm×22.8cmの小さな絵画なのだが、についてもまったく聞いたことがなかった。ましてやその画家であるCarel Fabritius（1622～1654）と言うオランダの画家についても、聞いたことがなかった。だがこの「The Goldfinch」という本が、“The New York Times Best Sellers”のリストに、長く掲載されていた時期があった。それがきっかけで、手に取ったのだ。 せっかくだから、Carel Fabritiusという事故に巻き込まれて夭折した画家について見てみよう。Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn（1606～1669）の弟子の中で、最も才能に恵まれた画家だとされている。ところで、Rembrandtについても、情けないことだけれども、このような名前の持ち主であることを知らなかった。「夜警」と言う絵画の名前については、美術書で見た記憶があるのだが、久しぶりにwebでこの有名な作品を見ると、そういえばこんな絵があったな、と言うことしか記憶がないのである。 さてCarel Fabritiusだが、北オランダの小さな村に画家Pieter Carelszの息子として生まれたようだ。2人の弟もやはり、画家になったと言う。はじめCarelは、大工となったのだが、彼のFabritiusと言う名は、大工のラテン語Fabritiusから採られたらしい。1640年代には、アムステルダムのRembrandtの工房で働くようになり、1650年代になるとオランダ中西部の中都市デルフトに移り、この地の画家のギルドに加わった。だがFabritiusは、1654年10月22日にデルフトで起こった火薬爆発事故に巻き込まれて、32歳で亡くなってしまった。この爆発によってデルフトの約25％が失われ、またFabritiusの工房も巻き込まれたため、彼の作品は10作品程度しか残されていないと言う。「The Goldfinch」は、その数少ない作品のひとつである。 ところで小説の方は、Theo Deckerと言う13歳の少年が、母親とメトロポリタン美術館を訪れたところ、爆弾テロに巻き込まれて、まるでFabritiusの命を奪った事故のように、Theoは奇跡的に生き延びたのだが、母親は亡くなってしまうところから始まる。 小説は950ページ以上に及ぶのだが、こんな長い小説は、さすがの数多いStephen Kingでも「The Stand」、「It」、そして「The Dark Tower」くらいしか読んだことがないものだから、さすがに時間がかかった。そしてなかなか山場というものがないので、比較的読みづらい作品であった。だがこうして読み終えてみると、さすがに達成感と言うものが湧き上がってくるのだから不思議なものである。

• Some books are read and easily forgotten. This is not one of them.

  Some books are read and easily forgotten. This one will stick with me for a long time. The characters are powerful, the writing is impressive, and Theo's fall through life is heart-wrenching. It all starts with a single, random, destructive event that will shape Theo's entire life. "It happened in New York, April 10th, fourteen 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.)" I talk in some detail about the plot points here. If you don't want to be spoiled at all, just get it and start reading, it's a great book. The explosion and Theo's escape is brilliantly written. Tartt captures Theo's confusion, disorientation and desperation with great realism. Theo's interaction with Welty, and witness of his death had me entranced. Tartt managed to evoke deep empathy and connection with this man, essentially a stranger, by sharing the intensely personal final moments of his life. And so begins Theo's fall. It seems to be arrested fairly quickly as the Barbours step in, but soon takes a turn for the worse as his father appears on the scene. The sequence of callous actions taken by Theo's father to sell his dead wife's possessions, Theo's failure to fight to keep his new and beautiful friendship with Hobie, and Mrs. Barbour's seeming failure to raise objections to Larry Decker's obvious unsuitability as a parent make for a chilling and depressing turn in the story. Theo moves into Larry and Xandra's huge empty house in a failed Vegas housing development, befriends misfit Boris, and begins his drug habit. "It seemed like the kind of room where a call girl or a stewardess would be murdered on television." I found this incredibly hard to read, there's something deeply disturbing about witnessing a promising young life slide inexorably towards disaster. There reached a point when 14 year old Theo was having a thanksgiving dinner of stolen potato chips and vodka, getting drunk and watching the Macy's Thankgiving Parade with Boris, that I began to despair of there being any good news or a chance for Theo to turn his life around. Theo and Boris' drug experimentation felt rather Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on a number of occasions. ""Of course," said Boris, looking less and less like a person every moment, and more like some degraded piece of silver nitrate stock from the 1920s, light shining behind him from some hidden source." Eventually there's another big change that at least gets him out of Vegas, but his life begins to be ruled by the stolen painting, particularly his fear of discovery and jail-time for the theft. He's so afraid of Hobie discovering the painting that he only leaves the house in his company and spends most of his time indoors scarcely leaving his room. Any hope I had that getting out of Vegas would set him back on the right track is soon crushed. His trauma over the death of his mother, and years of mistreatment and neglect by his father have left him isolated and unable to relate to his peers, even when he does get back to something like normal schooling: "They lived at home with their parents; they worried about things like grade curves and Itailian Abroad and summer internships at the UN; the freaked out if you lit a cigarette in front of them; they were earnest, well-meaning, undamaged, clueless." For a large part of the novel I found myself floundering around, desperately hoping for the hint of a happy resolution: that Theo and Pippa will be able to make a relationship out of two broken pieces, that Theo could make it as a legitimate antiques dealer. While this deep emotional connection is the sign of a great novel, it was also intensely depressing and made for some difficult reading. When Theo takes his international trip I felt like the person watching the horror movie yelling out "Don't go in there! Turn around!", it was so obviously a terrible idea. Having said that, I thought the ending was decent, there's some resolution, but not too happy as to be out of character with the rest of the novel. My main regret is that the details of art forgery and the international art-crime underground weren't explored more, perhaps through Boris' point of view. The glimpses we got from Theo were fascinating: "Short of black light or lab analysis, much of Hobie's fudging wasn't visible to the naked eye; and though he had a lot of serious collectors coming in, he also had plenty of people who would never know, for instance, that no such thing as a Queen Anne cheval glass was ever made." A very impressive novel. 4.5 stars. of my reviews at g-readinglist.blogspot.com Edit: added a spoiler warning.

• The Goldfinch - Loved it so much !!!

  I am so happy to have discovered Donna Tartt, and specially, THE GOLDFINCH. I adored this book. The writing is a masterpiece. The way the author magically blends ideas into words with no cliché at all, is pure beauty. I feel as if I were just discovering the different sensations that words can create. I loved it not because of the story but because of the writing. I am not saying that the story was not interesting. However, the beauty of the ideas, the development of the characters, very specially THEO, BORIS and PIPPA (loved HOBBIE but I feel he was like a pillar, so maybe the only one which we do not see evolving, and that because he had already reached this calm state). I truly believe that ANY STORY has a limit, humanity, individuals, have gone through a limited number of stories sort of. However, the BLENDING of IDEAS, of these mere stories INTO WRITING IS JUST INFINITE. And that is how the same story or stories can be told in so many ways. But only a true genius is capable of going out of himself or herself and view things in such a unique way as THE GOLDFINCH depicts.

• Love this book

  Amazing book, loved it

• Beautifully written and captivating

  This book enticed me in. Stunningly beautiful prose, the way things are written set the scene both visually and emotionally. The story was a curious one, guarding a painting is almost not the focus at all, but everything that happens around it. I really was touched and cried at many parts, invested as I was in the characters loves and losses. Makes sense as you get to know them so deeply, you feel as if you truly met them at sometime or other. I put this book down stunned, feeling like a simpleton and wishing more than anything I could write half as well as Tartt, just to express how wonderful the book truly is. If you're a worldly curious person interested in the inner dreams and motivations of people unknown, this is for you. If you need to be led to the point immediately, you should probably pass, as this takes you the long way round, but for me it's well worth taking.

• Edição econômica

  Ainda não li, mas queria mostrar como é a versão econômica

Purchase links