Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Has flaws, but still exceeds the average novel by far, October 1, 2006
I loved Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, immmensely and waiting for her second novel for years. I really wish I could say that this book exceeded the achievement of that book, but I can't. Nonetheless, I still think this far exceeds most of what is out there.
Tartt is a master of rendering the settings of her stories. This one really embraces childhood in the deep south. The characters, if not quite real, are certainly undertandable and detailed. Her theme here is dark. This novel is about bad deeds and punishment and the mood in the aftermath of death. The research is very good here and it feels very true. It is effective and well written, but a little heavier on symbolism than I prefer.
Nonetheless, as I said earlier, I very much liked this book and highly recommend it.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Gothic horrors in Magnolia-land., October 16, 2005
Weird happenings within an even weirder family combine with the "fusty, drunken perfume of Magnolia" to fill this southern Gothic novel with bizarre behavior and pervasive threats of death and revenge. Forces of evil are at work, according to Charlotte Cleve, a mother of three, who believes the mysterious hanging death of her nine-year-old son Robin resulted because she changed her traditional Mother's Day celebration from noon to six o'clock on the day he died.
Twelve years after Robin's death, his fiercely independent sister Harriet, now twelve herself, investigates the circumstances of Robin's death, bent on identifying and punishing his murderer. Bearing little resemblance to Scout, the endearing heroine of To Kill a Mockingbird, single-minded Harriet recognizes no limits and is willing to do anything, including using a gun, to accomplish her goals. Confronting ex-cons who run a crystal meth lab, ditsy great-aunts who know what's "right," redneck children who lurk in the bushes, two snake-handling preachers, a mother who turns her house into a maze filled with piles of rotting, old newspapers, and a sister who sleeps seventeen hours a day ("I only get bored when I'm awake," she says), Harriet takes more comfort from her plans for revenge than from traditional southern values.
Tartt's themes of death and punishment achieve some sense of universality through her use of numerous symbols and parallels, often with animals, but these are frequently sentimental. The euthanasia of a beloved pet cat; Harriet's accidental killing of a blackbird stuck in tar, snakes handled by hillbilly preachers; and the vicious dogs of the Ratliff family haunt the narrative. The old family home is called Tribulation; Harriet's heroes are Sherlock Holmes, Harry Houdini, and Captain Scott, the explorer; and she spends much of the novel looking for a pair of red gloves given to her by her black housekeeper, whom she loves but treats with casual cruelty.
The plot strains credulity, even for southern Gothic, and Harriet, as a twelve-year-old protagonist, is too wild and out-of-control to inspire much empathy as a character. The narrative focus of the novel gets lost, and many episodes, only peripherally related to the original search for justice, seem to become narrative ends in themselves. Filled with dense imagery and melodrama, this novel will appeal to those looking for fast escape reading. Mary Whipple
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