"Tartt's much bruited first novel is a huge (592 pages) rambling story that is sometimes ponderous, sometimes highly entertaining. Part psychological thriller, part chronicle of debauched, wasted youth, it suffers from a basically improbable plot, a fault Tartt often redeems through the bravado of her execution. Narrator Richard Papen comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the "hermetic, overheated atmosphere" of Vermont's Hampden College. Almost too easily, he is accepted into a clique of five socially sophisticated students who study Classics with an idiosyncratic, morally fraudulent professor. Despite their demanding curriculum (they quote Greek classics to each other at every opportunity) the friends spend most of their time drinking and taking pills. Finally they reveal to Richard that they accidentally killed a man during a bacchanalian frenzy; when one of their number seems ready to spill the secret, the group--now including Richard--must kill him, too. The best parts of the book occur after the second murder, when Tartt describes the effect of the death on a small community, the behavior of the victim's family and the conspirators' emotional disintegration. Here her gifts for social satire and character analysis are shown to good advantage and her writing is powerful and evocative. On the other hand, the plot's many inconsistencies, the self-indulgent, high-flown references to classic literature and the reliance on melodrama make one wish this had been a tauter, more focused novel. In the final analysis, however, readers may enjoy the pull of a mysterious, richly detailed story told by a talented writer."
(amazon.co.uk)

A expectativa era muita, ainda não tinha pegado neste livro pelo seu tamanho assustador (700 páginas é muito!). Mas com tantas boas recomendações, tinha de ser.
Estava avisada que o início era um pouco parado, mas que depois compensava. Na minha opinião, não há nada no livro que compense a seca que apanhei no início, no meio e também um pouco no fim... Thriller psicológico??? Ainda estou para saber onde está o thriller... Não há grandes surpresas, grandes revelações, e as constantes referências à literatura clássica são insuportáveis. A ideia que dá é que a autora, além da história que queria contar, aproveitou para gastar metade das 700 páginas em filosofias e mostrar como tem conhecimentos dos clássicos... Boring!!
E a falta de escrita simples, a constante utilização de palavras "floreadas", de adjectivos, também me aborreceu.

Enfim, este ano não ando com sorte nos livros... Se calhar o problema sou eu ;o)