Donna Tartt: The Little Friend

Yes! Very good comparison

lolz

The Secret History (which has the ring of truth to it, from my POV of being at a similar type of college) you are going to be really impressed.
― suzy (suzy), Friday, October 18, 2002 3:18 PM (sixteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol. i went to an east coast liberal arts college too and i wish. people were normie as hell.

ILX, where some things will never change

that's why i love this board

All of these kids better fucking go to jail

I have a very, very loose running list of books I missed and/or mean to catch up with, and there's really no rhyme or reason why one or another pops up to the top of the list. A few weeks ago that book was "The Goldfinch," and oof, what an embarrassment that thing was. I think Alfred's take upthread was pretty otm. It's like a parody of a YA novel, except, I suspect, accidentally so. Though at times it's so self-aware in its echos of Dickens and Salinger and ... all sorts of shit that maybe she's doing it on purpose. But if that were the case, then exhaustingly overwritten and steeped in such a mix of winking whimsy and phony pathos seems like a bad way to get there. Anyway, I skipped "The Little Friend" because the reviews were so negative, but how in the world did *this* dumb doorstop manage to bamboozle so many people? At least the movie apparently flopped and disappeared.

i had a student whose favorite book it was—maybe some of them read it when they're young?

I dunno, I found the Goldfinch incredibly engrossing on plot and character alone. The little friend I simply couldn't finish; I disliked almost everyone, and had a feeling we were never going to find out who killed the kid.

It's many years since I was a student and it's my favourite novel of all time as well.

xp

I loved The Little Friend, and enjoyed Goldfinch but the end where she whacks readers with her art bat was very boring and unnecessary.

I'm not sure I remember much of the book as being particularly boring, per se, but I did think huge hunks of it felt unnecessary.

i don't even remember this ending to Goldfinch that made so many people upset.

anyway, I was saddened to see that the film of this is apparently so fucking terrible because the cast all looked right; but a 2 hour movie seems far too short for this book, it really should be a limited series. They could even use the same cast and just jettison Crowley.

Her books don't bore me, but they are boring.

i watched the movie last week (having not read the book, mind), its not terrible, tho has several overt oscar-bait flourishes as one would expect

As the read the book I kept thinking of how the movie might be, and I hypothesized it would be similar in vibe to a Wes Anderson movie. Is that at all close?

nah

ok I made myself watch the Goldfinch movie last night and while I thought the first half was alright, the last third is terrible, and overall the movie just ditches the thing that made the book interesting to me, which was it's examination on grief and why he held on to that painting to begin with. what a mess.

also kid who played young theodore is the nephew of someone I went to elementary and middle school with, who I still occasionally talk to. so weird.

omg did not expect Sarah Paulson and Luke Wilson