Donna Tartt is a true enigma. She is a phenomenal bestseller with a cult following. There isn’t very much known about her but you wouldn’t call her a reclusive author either. The Goldfinch is her third novel in twenty years, a decade gap between each book. All of them worth the wait.
And the wait is almost over. The Goldfinch will be released on October 23rd and we have a very special, exclusive prize to giveaway.
Pre-order The Goldfinch before October 23 and go into the draw to win a signed and numbered collectors edition boxed set of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History & The Little Friend worth $350.
This is a must for any Donna Tartt Fan.
Pre-order The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt…
Also available in hardback and a special limited deluxe edition
Here’s the blurb..
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love – and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph – a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.
A few weeks ago, Ben Mikaelsen came to our school as this year's visiting author. Ben was a delight, and I'll write more about his visit in another post, but for now, I want to concentrate on his philosophy about writing.
"Writing," he said, "is storytelling."
Of all of the things that I got out of Ben's visit, and there were many, this simple sentence resonated with me in a way that I never would have expected. It stuck in my brain and kept tap, tap, tapping through my thoughts. You see, in some fantasy world of mine, I consider myself a writer. I always have, from the time I was very young, around seven or eight years old. It's all I wanted to do. Well, that and read.
So, why did the utterance of this sentence have such an effect on me? I think I figured it out. See, the thing is, as much as I love to write, I am not much of a storyteller. What Mr. Mikaelsen was talking about was just letting go of the notion that every word needs to be weighty and special and telling the story you want to tell. That has always been so incredibly hard for me. When I write fiction, I gnaw my knuckles over every syllable and twist of phrase. I get so caught up in trying to make every word the perfect word, I end up writing in nothing but fits and starts. Sometimes I even give up, thinking that it'll just never be perfect so why bother.
Even now, as I write this post, I'm stewing about words. How does one overcome that? Because I think Ben is absolutely right. The story is much more important than the words themselves. If you can tell a great story, you can get around to fixing the words later. Maybe in one of the fifteen full revisions that Ben says he does to each of his books!
I have actually written a book, a YA novel called The Power of Merit Ruhl, which took me two years to write. I'm proud of it. I had a story I wanted to tell, and I told it. But I agonized over words the whole time. Now, I want to try to tell more stories. I want to write a sequel to my book, and even make it into a series. I have the stories to tell, the arc for each of the four major characters, in my head. The question is will I be able to set aside my obssession with words and just tell the stories?
My favorite books tell really amazing stories. Donna Tartt's The Secret History is a good example of this. If you've never read it, go out right now and get yourself a copy. It's the story of a small group of friends at a private college who do a terrible thing and then have to hide their mess. This story left me breathless. There is one point of such delicious suspense that I practically ripped the book because I was holding it so hard. Another example of spectacular storytelling: Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier, a book that, though I've read it many times and even taught it, can still keep me enraptured to the very last page. I don't necessarily remember all of the fancy phrasing and uses of foreshad
