Even though I didn't much care for the Secret History, I read The Goldfinch wanting to see where I fell on the spectrum of people arguing passionately for and against it. It turns out I fall smack in the middle. The novel is wonderful in some respects, but I never held it to my chest and thought "I love this!" As with The Secret History, I felt disappointed by characters who seemed larger than life, a little too much like movie characters. I found the women especially cliched: the blonde uptown girl wears a pink Kate Spade coat, organizes her wedding binder from Kate's Paperie, and drinks white wine while the redhead downtown girl prefers colourful scarves and red wine. Theo's mom is classy, so she buys scented candles from Barney's but Xandre is trashy and materialistic so she wears Juicy Couture and has a little dog. I don't know...do we need the brands to understand the characters? 
 I also resented the way the novel strong-armed me, forcing me to accept turns I didn't find plausible. Was this part of the idea, to cause anxiety in the reader, to make the reader feel like the world is frightening and out of our control? I finally just "suspended my disbelief" and gave up trying to root for Theo, whose morals I could never figure out, but I felt cranky about this. Yes, the Las Vegas section felt too long, too. Decline, decay, obsession with death, drugs, vomit, air-conditioning, yuck. 
 So yes, I think my negative feelings may just be a traditional pushing back against the literary boundaries that Tartt is pushing at (i.e. how should a post post-modern hero behave?) It's possible that even the "over the top" quality verging on melodrama and mixing together all sorts of genres (I kept thinking of Woody Allen's Matchpoint...handsome, unmoored man must evade police to enter wealthy family) is intentional and that I just haven't bought into the post post-modern literature movement yet. BUT Tartt herself acknowledges that there is the original art and there are copies, there are the original antiques and there are mashed-up reproductions. I think she must know that The Goldfinch is a Hobie creation, beautiful but flawed. 
 I'm a little out of my league with this reference, but I kept thinking about Wagner...about how his music incites such passion in people: some find his works too long, requiring too much of the listener (and the performer), too bombastic and without center, but others think it's magical, profound, and that it touches them in a way that other music doesn't. The Goldfinch is to some people's taste and not to others but there's no denying that there is something special about it. Read it!