the BOYS in the BOAT

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the Langer See. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Okay, I changed "stream" to "Langer See", but that’s the lake where our boys beat the heavily favored Germans in The Olympics of 1936. Take that, Hitler! Daniel James Brown wrote an interesting non-fiction book about the nine gold medalist from Seattle’s University of Washington (I’ll call it the U of W) rowing team, featuring the life of rower Joe Rantz. This book reminds me of Laura Hillenbrand’s book, Seabiscuit, an unlikely champion thoroughbred horse, who along with the rowers from Seattle, Washington gave the American people something to cheer about in the aftermath of the Great Depression. It’s hard to believe that the mostly overlooked rowing program at the U of W was able to beat well trained east coast Ivy league schools, Syracuse, Navy and two-time defending Olympic champion, California, for the 1936 National Championship and Olympic trials. It was gritty country boys from Seattle versus the elite programs of the east coast. And congratulations to the savvy Mr. Brown for making this true story read like a work of fiction.

The book opens in the fourth year of the Great Depression (1933) when one out of four able bodied workers was jobless. Herbert Hoover is out and FDR is in. The story recollects Joe Rantz’s distressing life: Joe’s mom passed away at a young age; his dad, Harry, freaks out and leaves Joe abandoned but comes back to marry a woman named Thula, who hates Joe and ultimately kicks Joe out of the family. Joe falls in love with a girl named Joyce and tries to survive on his own. Joe works many exhausting jobs to save enough money to attend the U of W. He tries out for the nine man rowing team headed by Freshman coach Tom Bolles and makes the squad along with others who have never rowed before. The Freshmen are a success and catch the eye of the programs head coach, Al Ulbrickson. In an intriguing sidebar story, we learn about the school’s builder of their racing shells, George Pocock. The ensuing years are up and down for Joe as he struggles to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. FDR also struggles to turn the USA’s economy around while facing political foes and two Dust Bowls that threaten the ecology and agriculture industry. I thought Mr. Brown did a yeoman’s job of blending the country's problems with Seattle’s difficulties.

Meanwhile the story jumps back and forth from Seattle to Berlin as Hitler gets ready to host the Olympics while his propaganda maestro, the diminutive Joseph Goebbels, attempts to spread perfumed fog across the globe: all is well in peaceful Germany and to paraphrase, “willkommen athletes of all races and countries.” (Really?) Hitler hires German architect Werner March to knock down the old Olympic stadium (the original was never used because of the WWI cancellation of the Olympic games) and build a state of art stadium, which is still in use today. At the same time, Hitler authorizes Leni Riefenstahl (Goebbels is in love with her?) to make a propaganda movie about his 1934 Nuremberg Rally. On page 142, we find that, “The film that would emerge from her labors, Triumph of the Will, would come to define the iconography of Nazi Germany. To this day it stands as a monument to the ability of propaganda to foster absolute power and to justify unfettered hatred.”

Needless to say, as the boys from the U of W varsity team rowed towards their goal of Olympic gold, it became obvious how they were doing it. On page 241, Mr. Brown tells us, “There was a straightforward reason for what was happening. The boys in the Clipper had been winnowed down by punishing competition, and in the winnowing a kind of common character had issued forth: they were all skilled, they were all tough, they were all fiercely determined, but they were also good-hearted. Every one of them had come from humble origins or been humbled by the ravages of the hard times in which they had grown up.” This is truly a feel good "turnaround of fortunes" story for nine young men and an nearly curmudgeon head coach. I’ve left out most of this historical story, especially all the ins and outs of rowing that I learned by reading this book (do you know what it means when the rowers have ‘the swing’?) Anyway, grab a copy of this bestseller and enjoy.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I was curious if any of the “boys” were still alive. Sadly, the last member died in July 2009. The following is the story (originally published 7/24/2009) from the Seattle Times reporting the death of H. Roger Morris:

“The last surviving link to one of Seattle's greatest sports achievements has died.

H. Roger Morris, 94, who manned the bow position on the University of Washington crew that won the eight-oared gold medal at Adolph Hitler's 1936 Olympics in Berlin, died Wednesday at his home in Maple Valley.

Mr. Morris was the only remaining member of the crew, four of whom lived into their 90s. Bonded forever by their come-from-behind victory in the last Olympics before World War II wiped out the Games in 1940 and 1944, the rowers for many years had annual, informal reunions, one with families, the other for themselves only.

"I couldn't help but think, he was going to miss the reunion this year," said Bob Ernst, longtime rowing coach at Washington. "He was all by himself."

Ernst called Mr. Morris "a very humble guy, such a good guy. I don't think the gold medal ever became the focus of his life."

A daughter, Joan Mullen, said her father lived most of his years in the Seattle area. He earned a degree at Washington and became a mechanical engineer, specializing in dredging at Manson Construction.

Mr. Morris grew up in Fremont, attended Lincoln High School, and often walked to or from classes at the UW, his daughter said.

"Fremont was just plain poor then," she said, referring to the Depression era. "One year, he had an old Model-T [Ford] from his father that he was able to drive to school. Then his father needed it for someone who worked for him.

"He'd go to classes, go work out and then walk home. He said he got rides once in a while."

All the members of that Olympics-winning shell were from Western Washington, and none had rowed until going to the UW. Mullen recalls her father being pointed toward the sport by teammate Joe Rantz, who died at 93 in 2007.

The rowers had a phenomenal 1936 season, but had to raise money to help finance their trip. They joined Olympic teammates in New York on a steamship for the eight-day journey to Germany.

There, they conquered adversity. Hitler, three years before his invasion of Poland, was in the stands, and a deafening crowd of 25,000 chanted "Deutschland! Deutschland!" Meanwhile, stroke Don Hume of Olympia had become ill during the Games.

In the final, the Germans were placed in Lane 1 and the U.S. in Lane 6, where, coxswain Bob Moch told The Times in 2004, "the wind was blowing and the water was rough."

The Americans got a late start and because of the crowd noise, relied on Moch rapping against the boat for cadence.

Legend has grown that Hume had temporarily passed out, eyes closed, but snapped back to consciousness, something Hume disputed in a 1996 Times story.

Last at the 1,000-meter halfway mark, the boat overtook Germany and finally Italy in the last 10 strokes as Moch called for a furious strokes-per-minute rate that he estimated at 44.

"At the time, we weren't a major-league sports city," Ernst said. "We hadn't won a national championship in football or basketball. People identified with the university rowing team.

"They were as good as they could be in the era they got to do it."

Mullen said her father cut grass regularly on a rider mower at his Maple Valley ranch within a month of his death.

He was joined by his three children and most of his grandchildren at a restaurant for his 94th birthday only last week.

He rebuffed any suggestion of moving off his property, she said. "He'd say, 'That's fine,' Ms. Mullen recalled, " 'but I'm not leaving.' "

Mr. Morris is survived by two daughters, Mullen and Susan Hanshaw, and a son, James Morris, all living in the Seattle area; seven grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. A memorial service will be at 3 p.m. Monday at Maple Valley Presbyterian Church.”

Picture of the fabulous nine:

BLACKHOLE BUTTERFLY

The author sent me an autographed copy of this novel to review:

This is a cleverly written novel by Salem, but I’m not sure I’m clever enough to understand it. I’ve read the definition of quantum (a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents) many times. What does it mean? You’ve heard the idiom...You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, right? Well, to read this novel, guess again. I do know this: Rook Black is a NYC detective, but not in the traditional way. He gets his cases from a broker named Cosmo, is assisted by a clue dropping Angela, gets paid by untraceable currency (just like the rich folks), and has an occasional seizure that only can be mended by working the exposed electrodes on his head. What? Somebody named Agent Orange is trying to kill him, or not. Models and mannequins sometimes wear mustaches and van dyke beards. Ouch! Dr Chess is murdered in a tub. Is this Rook’s case, or not? The Gasland Gang, or the Petroleum Club (Rocky, the leader, is currently tied up submerged in a submarine), hates Dr. Naranja of the Empire, who loves Shakespeare’s prose.

Meanwhile, Jack the Butterfly (the quantum butcher - what does that mean?) seems to hate everybody. But he owns a pawn shop in Chinatown and does DNA drugs. What’s that? And who is this Mr. Millioni, who owns a crocodile show/bar and whorehouse where he serves a nasty drink called bai jiu? What’s his motives, if any? (Is he the Weedkiller?) Are you following this story so far? Sorry about all the question marks, but I don’t know the answers either. Then we have Jules Barbillon, who could be a pimp, assassin, or a buyer of Shakespeare matches. Yes, that’s what I said. He does blow up Rocky’s penthouse and has him kidnapped. Who does he work for? Is he a double agent? I also know that all mail is now electronic, and the mailman now carries a weapon and is part of a gang. We also know that Dr. Naranja’s solar empire has been managing reality for years. Crocodiles are now in NYC rivers and are seen in Chinatown wrestling matches. And everybody seems to like to drink their blood. I can’t figure out what is real and not real. That’s probably because I don’t know what quantum really means pertaining to this novel. Okay, enough said, buy your own copy to find out what happens in the next 331 pages.

When I started this novel by Salem, I thought this book was China Mieville-like (The City & The City ), in other words, weird fiction. But (I like starting sentences with conjunctions-have you noticed?), I realized later that I was reading ergodic literature. Why? Because Salem makes you work to understand what you are reading. That’s the pure definition of ergodic literature, which is reader participation! Got it? Was my mind taxed? You bet your sweet bippy. As a reviewer of all genres, I like to read novels that are different. I am open to most challenges in literature, avoiding the commercial writers like Demille, Patterson, Butcher, Baldacci, Grisham, etc. Salem’s descriptive writing skills are very good, for example on page 79, Salem describes Cosmo, “His warm dark chocolate brown eyes glowed under thin arching eyebrows, and he squeezed his eyelids tight, wondering if he had made the right decision.” Robert Louis Stevenson would have approved of that line. I guess my only beef with the novel is that it didn’t have to be that baffling or vague at times, “When Rook absolutely wanted to leave a trace, a cold trail of an identity, he cloned.” Everything considered, I believe Salem’s originality and ingenuity overcame any minor flaws in the novel. I recommend this debut novel, especially if you are a masochist (just kidding).

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Although Salem’s novel isn’t classic ergodic literature, it somehow reminded me of my first experience with that genre. I read and reviewed Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves on 2/01/2013, and it was some trip. This type of writing was actually started by Espen J. Aarseth when he published Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature in 1997. Wikipedia says this about ergodic literature, “In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.”

As for Cybertext, “Cybertext is a subcategory of ergodic literature that Aarseth defines as 'texts that involve calculation in their production of scriptons.' The process of reading printed matter, in contrast, involves 'trivial' extranoematic effort, that is, merely moving one's eyes along lines of text and turning pages. Thus, hypertext fiction of the simple node and link variety is ergodic literature but not cybertext. A non-trivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text, as the reader must constantly select which link to follow, but a link, when clicked, will always lead to the same node. A chat bot such as ELIZA is a cybertext because when the reader types in a sentence, the text-machine actually performs calculations on the fly that generate a textual response. The I Ching is likewise cited as an example of cybertext because it contains the rules for its own reading. The reader carries out the calculation but the rules are clearly embedded in the text itself.” 
   
I know what you are saying...none of this makes any sense. Bingo! This is the book that I reviewed on 2/01/13:

POLYNIA

Polynia is defined as an area of open water surrounded by sea ice; in other words, icebergs. Well, our weird fiction guru, China Mieville, has written a delightful short story for Tor.com that surprisingly is not of his usual genre. The first line in the story makes the reader continue perusing, “When cold masses first started to congeal above London, they didn’t show up on radar.” Is it possible for icebergs to form in the sky? According to Mieville’s imagination, the answer is yes. This is the story of eleven year old Robbie along with his friends Ian and Sal running underneath these ice behemoths attempting to solve the mystery, so to speak. As the masses form into dangerous icebergs dangling over London, the government and greenhorn survey teams land on the bergs to investigate. Can they figure out the conundrum? What will happen if the icebergs bump into each other while the probers are still aboard the ice? And why has coral started to form on the buildings of Brussels?

This was an enjoyable break from Mieville’s normal neologistical and dubious style. Since I’ve read four of Mieville’s novels (The City & The City , Kraken , Embassytown and Railsea ), I’m not knocking his genre. It’s just that it’s refreshing to see that he can write in other manners. The great writers, such as Mark Twain, have been able to diversify their writings. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a satire with strong colloquial language, while The Prince and the Pauper is basically children's literature. Although Mieville isn’t in the class of the above mentioned author, he has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the British Fantasy Award. So lets give Mieville his due. Anyway, savor the story, it might be the last one that you can understand.

Is this one of the sky icebergs?


RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Reading Mieville’s short story got me thinking...What are the top three great American short stories? Wow, so many to choose from, but here are my choices:

Most likely number one in a lot of reviewer’s minds is The Gift of the Magi (1905) by O. Henry.Wikipedia says, "The Gift of the Magi" is a short story, written by O. Henry (a pen name for William Sydney Porter), about a young married couple and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been a popular one for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time. The plot and its "twist ending" are well-known, and the ending is generally considered an example of cosmic irony.

  Okay, now for number two. Since I love stories by Washington Irving, I picked The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), although I could have picked his Rip Van Winkle . Wikipedia says, “The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (historical Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors. The most infamous spectre in the Hollow is the Headless Horseman said to be the ghost of a Hessian Trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during “some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head".

My last pick is again because I love the author, Edgar Allen Poe. But his The Purloined Letter is considered an American classic. Wikipedia says, “The unnamed narrator is discussing with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin some of his most celebrated cases when they are joined by the Prefect of the Police, a man known as G—. The Prefect has a case he would like to discuss with Dupin. A letter has been stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed female by the unscrupulous Minister D—. It is said to contain compromising information. D was in the room, saw the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been blackmailing his victim.”

I must thank Wikipedia for making my explanation of these classic short stories easier.
 

BURNING UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

If I didn’t recently read and review (12/09/2012) Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin, I would be attracted to Carl Waters’ (Volume 1) version of this American classic. Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most important novel ever written for the American people with the possible exception of Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense. Mr. Waters' novel is the first of four planned novels dissecting the original novel. One would ask, why? Well, according to the author, “The Burning Uncle Tom’s Cabin series comprises four books whose narratives are told from the slaves points of view. I have removed many of the racial stereotypes, plot holes, and excessive preaching from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s world changing story.” Waters also states in the book’s introduction, “I do not understand or agree with Uncle Tom’s overall mindset.” This is where I disagree. In my mind, Uncle Tom is the most courageous and righteous character in American Literature. When Tom died in Stowe’s 1852 novel, it ignited a groundswell of opinion against the South and slavery. When Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862 at the White House, he called her “The little woman who started this great war.” And, I believe the character of Uncle Tom had a lot to do with purging America of slavery.

Burning Uncle Tom’s Cabin deals with Stowe’s sidebar story of George Harris, his wife Eliza and their son, Harry. George lives on the plantation of the wicked Frank Harris. George is on loan to a hemp factory where he invented a hemp-cleaning machine to the delight of his foreman, Charles Wilson. Understandably, George, through his hard work, has earned the right to occasionally visit his wife and son at the Shelby Plantation five miles away. George is planning his escape to Canada. Meanwhile at the Shelby’s estate, Eliza and her son are treated as family (if that’s possible). But trouble is brewing. One day a slave trader appears at the plantation. Eliza overhears the trader, Dan Haley, calling in a debt from Mr. Shelby. He wants Uncle Tom and Eliza’s Harry to settle the debt. Eliza warns Uncle Tom and then runs for Canada with three year old Harry.

Back at the hemp factory, Mr. Harris suddenly appears and wants George back on the farm, so to speak. Why? On page thirteen, Mr. Wilson protests losing George and the contemptible Frank Harris says, “I won’t have him stayin’ another minute, pickin’ up airs and thinkin’ too high of himself! This boy’s a lazy, no good Negro, ain’t never done anything worthwhile at my plantation!” Once back on the plantation, Frank Harris treats George badly, giving him the worst chores possible. George is told that he will never see his Eliza and Harry again; in fact, he is forced to take a wife that Frank Harris picks out. When George objects, he is severely whipped and branded on the palm of his hand. Later that night, one of Uncle Tom’s sons sneaks over to George’s shack and informs him that Eliza and Harry are on the run to Canada. Now George is also on the run! All of this happens during the first 77 pages. The rest of this unique rewrite revolves around the pursuit of the Harris family by the slave traders. Will they make it to Canada, or will tragedy strike? You will have to buy your own copy of this revised version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic to find out.

I believe it would be more advantageous for Mr. Waters to write his own Southern Gothic novel rather than pursue this project. The task he is taking-on is very difficult. I see talent in his writing, but certain attributes he is trying to change are very difficult and awkward to modify. For example: the language used in his variant of the novel. In the 1850s, writers like Stowe and Mark Twain used the African American Vernacular English dialect spoken by the negroes of the time period. The author could have used a cleansed version of this dialect. I’m talking about using the local colloquial expressions of the whites (which the author did occasionally) and the negroes (which the author didn’t do) to make the novel more believable. This is very hard to do and still accomplish what Mr. Waters set out to achieve, namely a novel where the slaves are not inferior to the whites; have equal intelligence, and have the courage to shed their shackles. In a certain way, the author did that, but lost credence by not using a purified version of the local vocabulary of 1851. Anyway, I commend the author for taking on this very difficult endeavor, but it wasn’t original enough for me.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: In 1853, Stowe published, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin to dispute the claims from the South that the original book exaggerated the cruelty of the slaves. In the new book, Stowe gave documented examples of cruelty along with corroborative statements. The book was well received worldwide except for the South. The book sold 90,000 copies in the first month alone.

Goodreads.com states, “When first published, Uncle Tom's Cabin brought with its huge success enormous attention to the depravity of slavery. Many people, however, questioned the basis of truth of the novel. In response, Ms. Stowe gathered her research materials and published them in this now rare book.”

Wikipedia.org states, “The reaction of Stowe’s contemporaries to A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was very similar to the reaction to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with both very positive and very negative reviews. The responses of abolitionists and Northerners in general were among the positive, lauding the proof of the evils of slavery and the confirmation of the truth of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The great interest in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in England also transferred to the Key. One English review of the 1853 publication called it a “marvelous book, more so if possible than Uncle Tom’s Cabin itself.” This same review also commends Stowe’s self-control and character. This impression of Stowe and the reception of the book is much different than the reaction to the Key in the South.

The pro-slavery response to the Key paralleled the response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Despite Stowe using documented examples to make the Key a verification of the truth of Stowe’s depiction of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, most Southern reviews still claimed that Stowe was misrepresenting slavery and exaggerating the cruelty of the institution. A review in the Southern Literary Messenger called the Key a “distortion of the facts and mutilation of the records, for the sake of giving substance to the scandalous fancy, and reduplicating the falsehood of the representation.” Although these reviews claimed that Stowe was misrepresenting slavery, they did not accuse Stowe of using false documentation. Rather they claimed that the examples that Stowe provides are the most extreme instances, which she gathered to give the worst possible impression of the institution of slavery, and of the south. One critic, William Simms, accused her of using faulty argumentation by gathering facts to prove her assumption, instead of forming assumptions based on facts. Another pro-slavery reaction to both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, rather than critiquing the work itself, a critique of Stowe’s character. Many reviews made insinuations about what sort of woman Stowe must be to write about such events as were found in the Key. One review by George Holmes questioned whether “scenes of license and impurity, and ideas of loathsome depravity and habitual prostitution [are] to be made the cherished topics of the female pen” and appealed to women, especially southern women, not to read Stowe’s productions.”

Historyengine.richmond.edu discovered some disdain for Stowe’s Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin dated 7/1/1853, “In 1853 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the companion to her famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she titled it A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her purpose in writing the book was to explain why she thought that whites were still unwilling to take pity on slaves. While Stowe claimed that she understood that slaves were more than property, she postulated that other whites still saw slaves as sub-human. Stowe did admit that she did not fully understand blacks, but she thought that by applying Christian kindness to them, their situation might be helped. One shocking thing that Stowe revealed was that she believed that slaves repulsed themselves; she wrote that they thought they were evil because their skin was black. She did not think that blacks were capable of reaching the same intellectual and moral heights as whites, and she blames that inability on their disgust in themselves. Southerners were not at all pleased with Stowe's book. Critics characterized it as having a narrow field of view. She was accused of making generalizations about Southerners as being unaffected by the plights of slaves. This bothered critics who felt that Southerners were not deficient in their morality. One critic tried to explain that the North had the same prejudices as the South. He wrote wherever man is found, we find equally the same vices, crimes, and weaknesses. Southerners were also alarmed at the lack of biblical references in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. They felt that she was writing too righteously not to be using the Bible. The outrage caused by Stowe's book in South was significant because it exemplified the schism between what southerners thought about northerners, what northerners thought about southerners, and the truth.”

Drawing of Eliza and Harry jumping the ice floes (a 1938 book edition)

The GOLDFINCH

Donna Tartt’s novel certainly merits the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but does have some discernible flaws (we will discuss later). I saw the CBS interview with Donna Tartt and now understand why her prose is so impeccable. She takes ten years to write a book! She wrote one novel each at the ages of 29, 39 and 49. She is influenced by the writing style of Charles Dickens, which accounts for her incredible, descriptive writing. The aftermath of the museum explosion extends for a suspense filled eighteen pages (pp. 31-48). We see the outcome of the detonation through the eyes of our narrator and protagonist, Theo Decker. This was one of several sections the author wrote that I thought was exceptionally proficient. I also thought introducing Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1868 novel, The Idiot, was a clever writer’s ploy since the Russian novel is a classic study of the conflict between good and evil, which abounds in Tartt’s novel. Lastly, this might seem trite, but I loved the author’s generous use of commas, semicolons and dashes. I know that there are grammatical rules for their usage, but I like ‘a little extra cheese on my pizza’ (is that a idiom?). What is the story about?

Okay, Theo Decker is a thirteen year old student living in N.Y.C. who gets into dubious trouble in school and gets suspended. Now his estranged mom and Theo head for the school for a meeting. They are early, it’s raining, so they duck into an art museum to pass some time and see the Dutch artist exposition, mainly Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson and C. Fabritius’s The Goldfinch. Theo is mesmerized with a red headed girl (Pippa) his age accompanied by a old man presumed to be her grandfather (Welty). As Theo and his mom walk to the gift shop, mom decides to go back to see the painting one more time, leaving Theo in the shop alone when he spots the girl and her companion again. Just as he approaches the girl, a massive explosion occurs in the museum. He is covered in debris and disoriented. He hears the old man groaning and goes to him. The girl is nowhere to be seen. The old man is dying. Where is mom? The old man spots “a dusty rectangle of board” covered in rubbish and wants Theo to get it. My God, it’s The Goldfinch painting. The old man (Welty Blackwell) wants to know where Pippa is. Theo doesn’t see her (why am I using so many short sentences?). He gives Theo his “heavy gold ring with a carved stone” and tells him to take it to Hobart and Blackwell. “Ring the green bell.” Theo finally finds his way out of the museum, dazed and hurt, unable to get anyone to help him. He still has the painting. He walks home in the rain to wait for his mom to return from the museum. Guess what, she’s dead, and suddenly Theo is alone.

Is Theo going to experience the same problems that Pip in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations endured? Maybe. Mom doesn’t come home, a social worker from the Department of Child and Family Services calls, and the story is off and running (idiom alert). The reader is going to encounter the peculiar Barbour family, agonize over Theo’s life with his dad in Las Vegas, meet his crazy Russian friend, Boris, and delight in Theo’s relationship with Hobart (Hobie). What happened to Pippa? And what about The Goldfinch? Who has it and what will become of it? It is the focus of the story, yet the author occasionally seems to forget about it for a hundred pages or so. I guess that can happen in a 771 page novel. The cigarette smoking, vodka drinking and drug using Boris is a character that the reader loves and periodically hates. The author has the unique ability to make the reader like the characters she wants you to like (Theo, Hobie, Pippa, Mrs. Barbour, Andy and sometimes Boris) and hate the characters she wants you to hate (Theo’s dad, Boris’s dad, Lucius Reeves, Tom Cable and sometimes Boris). Can this lady write or what?

Alright, now for the flaws. When the reader gets to page 643...suddenly it’s a race to the finish line; the author can’t wait to get to page 771. Why? The novel was plodding along nicely for 642 pages and probably nine years of Donna Tartt’s life. If you are writing a book that long, what difference does it make if the novel is a couple hundred pages longer? The extra pages would have given the author the time needed to develop all the new characters that turned up near the end. Lastly, what was that life and death tirade (in the last five pages) all about? Don’t get me wrong, I loved the book...it’s just that it could have been better.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: As I said before, Donna Tartt has only written two previous novels, The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002), winner of the WH Smith Literary Award (2003).So lets take a look at these books:

The Secret History: Amazon.com says: “Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch, established herself as a major talent with The Secret History, which has become a contemporary classic.

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.”

Goodreads.com says: “Richard Papen arrived at Hampden College in New England and was quickly seduced by an elite group of five students, all Greek scholars, all worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, all highly unapproachable. As Richard is drawn into their inner circle, he learns a terrifying secret that binds them to one another...a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life...and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning....”

The Little Friend: Amazon.com says: “The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet—unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and “a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens” (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.”

Goodreads.com says: “Bestselling author Donna Tartt returns with a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil.

The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.”

Picture of The Goldfinch by C. Fabritius (1654), the main focus of the novel: