elle

Don’t believe what anyone says, this book is amazing and I’m not sorry for saying. For starters, yes, this book IS a bit slow (a complaint I hear all the time). I won’t lie and say that sometimes, it slows down and could maybe get rid of a few scenes that I think didn’t show much purpose. This book could easily cut out 100 pages. All of that is true. However, the good is SO good that I can’t even focus on those other factors as much. First off, this is a story about grief, and I’ve never seen anything be able to portray the hurt of it quite like this. The main character, Theo, loses his mom in a bombing, and to see the aftermath is absolutely gut wrenching. My insides twist every time he just can’t stop thinking about his mom, or sees something that takes him back to the old times. The grief never leaves and goes in stages, with him, and it’s just so accurate it makes me stop and appreciate how well Tartt wrote such a complicated feeling. And, despite what others say, I love the main character. Watching Theo spiral from just a kid to a drug addict awaiting death, at the bottom of the barrel, was so hard to read—in the best way. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen such a drastic fall such as Theo, and I enjoy hearing from his point of view. You could only have this book with such a depressing character as himself. The other characters are undoubtedly amazing. Hobie is a wonderful treat, and I adore Pippa as well. But without a doubt, Boris is an amazing character. Adding him to the mix makes this book filled with even more morally gray characters. He has such a wonderful personality, and I’m never tired of him in the book. When he showed up in Las Vegas, I read that arc in about 1 or 2 days since I was so addicted to his chemistry with Theo. And to see another character who has suffered as much as Theo is, again, gut wrenching, but also kind of a relief that someone understands Theo. There’s also some romance in this book, which I felt was handled so well. With Theo, there’s a marriage without love. He thinks he loves another Pippa, but it borders an obsession with his trauma rather than romance. He falls in love with Boris, too, the strange but close relationship they have. There’s so many different sides to romance that I’m a bit addicted, to be honest. Also, the way Tartt describes in this book is just. Phenomenal. The sceneries have excruciating details that I feel like I’m pulled inside the book, and the emotions she writes make me feel the exact things the characters do. Theo goes to different places, say New York and Vegas, and it just completely shifts. You don’t have to imagine where he is and what the scenery is like, the story does more than enough to explain it which makes it so immersive. On that note….like I said, this book can be a bit long. I felt like some scenes just didn’t need to be there (after all, this book is 800 pages with the smallest text). Even though I loved it, sometimes I had to motivate myself to get through certain parts. The ending was a bit unsatisfying to me, but it didn’t take away from all the amazing stuff I read in the book previously. TLDR; An emotional experience, beautiful and depressing. A descriptive masterpiece that’s so immersive, you feel like the characters in the location they’re at. Unfortunately a bit slow at times, and wouldn’t recommend reading further if you didn’t like the first 100 pages.