The Goldfinch

Author: Donna Tartt

It has been more than 2 years since I first laid my eyes on this book and wanted to read it. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014, and as a rule I read most of the Pulitzer prize winning books. Every time I picked up this book, I quickly put it down after I realized that it was almost 800 pages long. This time however, I had a long flight to India and back and was eagerly looking for some distraction to the cramped confines of the aircraft cabin. I promptly downloaded the book on my kindle and was all set to sink my teeth into the goldfinch.

The story starts out with thirteen year old, Theo Decker who is living with his Mom in New York city after his delinquent Dad has disappeared from the scene. A problem at school results in Theo and his Mom spending the day visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Before you know it there is an explosion that launches the story into high gear.  The object at the center of the story and the title of the book is the “Goldfinch” painting by  the Dutch artist, Carel Fabritius.

From here on it is a non-stop ride that takes you to Las Vegas and back. Donna has written an epic that is compared to many a Dickensian tale for how well she develops her characters and the rich prose that describes their activities. Unfortunately, one of the main activities is doing drugs and while I am no prude, I have to admit that Theo and his friends takes this to an extreme. After reading this book I got the feeling that it is not uncommon for young people in New York and Las Vegas to be regularly ingesting vast amounts of prescription drugs.

Despite the gratuitous drug consumption, Goldfinch paints a wonderful story replete with interesting characters and high thrills.  I particularly liked the Russian kid Boris as he breezed through life with not a care in the world. Pippa, the object of Theo’s desire,  is rather enigmatic and flits in and out of the story. 

If you have time to kill and lots of it, you should definitely read this book. If you only have a couple of hours to spare, just wait for the movie which I am sure is in the works. 

Disgrace

Author: J.M. Coetzee

Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and this book one the Booker Prize in 1999. A quick research on Amazon revealed plenty of 4 and 5-star reviews. The book was only a couple of hundred pages with well spaced lines and I needed no more incentive to check it out.

When I started reading the book, I quickly realized why Coetzee is so well regarded in the Literary world. His prose is sparse but to the point. He can quickly move from describing a scene to something more metaphysical without skipping a beat. In Disgrace, the protagonist, David Lurie is a 50+ year old University professor in a South Africa. He is twice divorced and does not have any friends or companions.  He satisfies his sexual urges with a regular visit to a local prostitute. When that ends, he seduces one of his students. Both of these events are described in a rather clinical, without much pathos which makes you feel like a bystander watching someone self-destruct. And that is precisely what happens in the rest of the book. In describing this, Coetzee gets the reader to ponder on much weightier issues like post-apartheid race relations in South Africa and definitely gets you to look at it from an unconventional point of view. 

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

Author: Jon Ronson

I am a big fan of “This American Life” (TAL) radio show on NPR and stumbled on the episode where Ira Glass and the rest of the TAL cast take the Psychopath Test. I got a quick introduction to the famous PCL-R test created by Canadian Psychologist, Bob Hare and how it is in widespread use by the Prison system in deciding whom to let out on parole. While the episode was eye-opening, I was hugely impressed by the section where Jon Ronson narrates his interview with Al Dunlap, the former CEO of Sunbeam corporation, to make the connection on whether there were traits of psychopaths that were beneficial to business leaders.  I quickly decided that I had to read his book and was so drawn in by his narration, that I was determined to make it my first audio book.

When I first got the 6 CD-set from the library, I was concerned that with all the advancements in audio streaming, my new car may not be equipped with a CD player. On opening the glove compartment, I discovered that there was a DVD player in there and it hungrily accepted the CDs. Apart from the hassle of changing the CD while driving, the entire experience was a very pleasant one, with Jon Ronson’s paranoid voice walking me down the memory lane of psychologists attempt to detect and classify pschyopaths.

The cover very aptly describes the book as a "a wild romp through the madness industry”.  I highly recommend the audio book as Ron Johnson tell’s the story with that “fear” in his voice that reaches out through the speakers and grabs you. Apart from the Al Dunlap story, there are many that will make you wonder whether this is all really non-fiction. There’s the story of Tony who faked madness to escape a prison sentence and now can’t get the authorities at his mental hospital to be convinced that he is sane. When you listen to how hard it is for someone who is declared a psychopath to get out of a mental institution, you begin to wonder how many sane people might be trapped in there.  You hear about Ron’s interviews with the Haitian extremist Toto Constant the founder of a Haitian Death Squad that terrorized supporters of Jean Bertrand Aristide.  There’s also a story about David Shayler, an ex-MI5 operative who keeps raising the bar with more and more outlandish conspiracy theory claims. Most of these folks come across as fairly normal human beings and it is hard to reconcile their past activities. 

Ron wavers in his quest to become the perfect Psychopath decoder, and starts questioning whether he himself might not be a little insane. Maybe we all have a bit of insanity in us and it is just a question of what is socially acceptable and what is not.