AK Blakemore: ‘The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt was extremely silly and bad’

Filed by Vivien Star

The poet and author on F Scott Fitzgerald’s perfect novel, losing faith in Ernest Hemingway – and the recent debut that blew her awayMy earliest reading memory Lynley Dodd’s Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy – where an assortment of differently shaped dogs go on a walk – wormed its way into my subconscious when I was very young. The great dane (Hercules Morse, as big as a horse), the dalmatian (Bottomley Potts, covered in spots), the dachshund (Schnitzel Von Krumm with a very low tum) … I co