How to Get Over The Goldfinch
Remember when Avatar came out and there was a time when people got so wholly absorbed in its astounding vibrancy that they just kept lurking around movie theaters re-watching it fifty times until their parents were like “Hey listen, cool it on the AmEx charges, that was supposed to be for emergencies,” and people were like “How is this not an emergency?” Well, it was a thing.
And the same thing is happening to people who read The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s most recent magnificent work. Here’s a list of books to nurse you through the stages of grief once you have finished it—I speak as no stranger to this malady myself.
The first stage of grief is, of course, denial. With denial, you simply pretend there is no issue. What? A gorgeous, engrossing, if-Dickens-and-Salinger-had-a-baby baroque? Why, you’ve no memory of ever reading such a thing. For this stage I suggest something wholly other in scope and tone to support this willed state of lunacy—specifically, Goodbye to All That, Writers on Loving and Leaving New York. It’s like a glass of cool water and a stroll around the garden after you’ve digested an entire rum-soaked chocolate cake. Sari Botton has beautifully edited these essays into an each-one’s-better-than-the-last collection, rooted firmly in the actual world of real joys and struggles—like rent, and children, and why are these closets so small.
The second stage is anger. Anger is the purger of woe, and Adelle Waldman’s uncomfortably incisive peek into the precious world of Brooklyn here and now, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., is guaranteed to fire your ire right up the chimney and spread bitter ashes over everything you took for granted about why all the bearded dudes flapping their lips about literature are so galling. You took it for granted because they are in fact genuinely galling, and Waldman’s Whartonesque comedy of manners skewers their culture and roasts it to succulent perfection. You will be like, “Theo who?”
The third stage, bargaining, is rough. It’s a period of holding two contradictory truths (I can be ok! I can never be ok) to be equally valid, which if you’re not crazy you will know is not possible. For this you need a solid bargaining chip, and Rob Delaney’s Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage will bolster your munitions. Fleshed from the weird bones of Delaney’s Twitter account, the pieces are brief, dark, and wicked funny. Tell yourself it’s going to be okay. You can enjoy books! You can enjoy this book! But if you could just get one last taste…
There is no last taste. The fourth stage of grieving is depression. The Goldfinch is over and you are a wastrel now, you must scavenge out the rest of your days reading about people you don’t care about and can’t believe in. Life is pain, Highness. For this penultimate awful crawl through the five stages I recommend nothing. Just watch TV, I guess.
I’m just kidding! What am I, a monster? For your depression phase you should just go back and read Donna Tartt’s previous novels, how did you not even think of that yet? The Secret History is deftly drawn and richly rendered, and The Little Friend is a perfect shivery creeper. It’s going to be rough, but you’re going to persevere, and the end is in sight…
The final stage is acceptance! Put your hands up. These are the glory days; the world is a beautiful charcuterie plate and you are recently released from a hunger strike. At this stage I cannot recommend highly enough Dan Josefson’s That’s Not a Feeling. Cleverly told, expertly peopled, and surprisingly moving, this story of troubled kids at a weird camp is my favorite thing I’ve read so far this year.
If this doesn’t work for you, if, in the end, you find yourself still hiding under the bed longingly stroking the end pages of The Goldfinch, you might need help beyond what I’ve been able to offer here. If that proves to be the case, you know what you have to do. You have to read Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.
Meet you back here on the other side of that. Wear black; it’s gonna be a doozy.
What books have you needed help getting over?