.gif)
Notwithstanding its success, The Goldfinch relied on clichés rooted in racial and ethnic stereotypes to realize its settings and elevate the protagonist.
I picked up The Goldfinch on a whim during my last visit to the library. While surveying the shelves for books that would inspire me to read again after an intense academic semester, Tartt’s name caught my eye. Previously, I read and enjoyed her novel The Secret History, a fascinating and disturbing exploration of what drives a group of elite college students to murder a fellow classmate. I borrowed The Goldfinch on the promise of The Secret History; at the time, I knew nothing of its plot or its critical acclaim. I was later surprised to find that, despite the dissent of a few literary critics who dismissed the writing as childish, The Goldfinch is a popular and generally well-respected book that I’d simply missed out on. (Granted, I was 12 years old at the time of its release, but as a book blogger I would have expected it to at least cross my periphery). In fact, Tartt’s almost 800-page tome sold over 1.5 million copies within the first months of its release, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review, among others, as “a rarity” and “a smartly written literary novel”, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. While reading, I was thus even more surprised to discover how, notwithstanding its success, The Goldfinch relied on clichés rooted in racial and ethnic stereotypes to realize its settings and elevate the protagonist.
