The Goldfinch

For me, this was nothing short of a masterpiece of fiction! No wonder it won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Rich, emotional, and profound are just a few descriptors that come to my mind.

THE GOLDFINCH is not just well-written, but beautifully-written. Don't be put off by its length because you will fly through this page turning plot, with fully-drawn and resonating characters, believable dialog, and insightful perspective on us humans and our lives. It is also one of the saddest books I've ever read.

The book tells the story of Theo, a teenage boy journeying into adulthood, after the sudden and tragic death of his mother. "The Goldfinch" is the 17th Dutch century painting by Carel Fabritius that accompanies Theo on his journey. show more Moving in and out are an array of fascinating personalities and seemingly disparate strata of society- Russian emigres, furniture restoration, illegal drugs, child protective services, high society in NYC, loan sharks in Las Vegas, and art thieves in Amsterdam.

It's also a story about human vulnerability where a single random event can completely redirect one's life. About the core meaning of concepts like love, trust, and right and wrong. And about the role art plays for humanity.

You can't help but become deeply involved in Theo's life. You will feel his disappointment when those he depends on let him down. You will sympathize when he sometimes makes bad decisions. And you will worry about him until the very last page. Enjoy! show less

The Goldfinch reportedly took its author 10 years to complete; it has taken me nearly half that time to finish reading it. I seem to recall the author appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, who revealed he’d read the entire book and was quite enthusiastic about it. Other sources compared it to Dickens and that was probably the approximate cause that got me started reading; I’ve liked Dickens since I was in high school. The Goldfinch wasn’t quite that.

Pip in Great Expectations learns that his whole life has been based on an illusion about who is pulling the strings. Theo is haunted throughout most of his adult life by several levels of illusion of which he is acutely self-aware from the git go, but, thanks to Boris, the show more foundation of his illusion turns out to be itself an illusion. Meanwhile, the love of Theo’s life is “Pippa.” (Her name suggests that he is in love, like Narcissus, with his own PTSD image.) But surely the disillusionment theme combined with the work of art and memory as an organizing principle seems to have been purloined from Proust.

At the center of the novel is a con job, involving objets d’art. On the one hand furniture is restored or repaired using parts of the original combined with parts that might be cannibalized from contemporary objets, as well as brand new ones. Hobie, the restorer, takes justified pride in the skills needed to create these pastiches which he creates not to deceive but as an homage to and a means of recapturing the aura of the original. On the other hand, Theo sells the pastiches as “the real thing” using convoluted rationalizations for the fraud. Both honest work of secondary art and deception; the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Does the reader?

Fictional theft of a real artifact. Pastiche of Dickens, Proust, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Dostoyevsky, Pulp Fiction – God or Tartt knows what else. Rationalizing literary theft by analyzing the technique of a Dutch realist, technique that is both trompe l’oeil and (upon closer examination) shows that the eye has been trumped by artistic technique. The novel even has a final chapter that substitutes for the Reader’s Guide appendix found in popular trade paperbacks. But the imprisoned bird that was the basis of the painting was once real. The character who can rationalize his imprisonment in a life of misery as a work of art by God or Bozo the Clown is not real.

The novel could be read as a pastiche of jokes on the reader or as an ethical exercise. Impatient with Theo’s self-destruction? Feel superior to him because I have the good judgment not to make a series of interminable stupid decisions characteristic of PTSD victims and drug addicts, and they’re boring and I will just ignore them? I close the book on him just as I close the book on the other wretches I encounter IRL. Frustrated, as I was, with the innumerable digressions and shaggy dog stories that always seem to be postponing the revelation of What I Really Need to Know? Should hire Lee Child’s editor. Or maybe the digressions are the point? A 21st century Tristram Shandy? Source of these are a hoard of notebooks Theo has been filling since the age of 13! Heard the one about the guy who couldn’t kill himself because he couldn’t write a suicide note that wasn’t sentimental or mawkish? Which ending Is more ridiculous: the Tarentino shoot out or the sketchy tip that makes everyone a millionaire! Is the whole work a shaggy dog story, a con? Aesthetically true, authentic – or not – it’s possible to read it – or, now, re-read it – over a long period of time because the broadly drawn characters and coincidence-bloated events are easy to recall even after a long interval and those digressions that might be the novel’s reason for being. show less

This imposing chunkster demands a significant commitment of time on the part of the reader. The story is long, taking the protagonist from New York to Las Vegas to Amsterdam, through the world of art, antiques, drugs, and dysfunction, from the age of 13 to about 30, and still leaving the reader gasping at the end. It's a book that inspires awe at the level of detail the author presents. It arouses sympathy for some characters, and rage at others. It infuriates, cheers, exasperates, and still produces belly laughs. At the end, the reader is stunned and must sit for some time digesting all that has happened, trying to decide if the implausible scenes are at all plausible, if the plot isn't a bit too contrived, if the protagonist and all show more those around him aren't just too well-drawn to be believable. And...in the end, it all works to leave me able simply to say "This is a very good book."

Without major spoilers, this is the story of 13 year old Theo Decker, victim of a terrorist bombing in a New York Museum of Art in which his divorced mother dies. Theo somehow manages to "save" the painting entitled The Goldfinch from the carnage, doesn't tell anyone he has it, and begins a journey of several years trying to decide what to do with the painting and whether (and to whom) he should return it. In the meantime, he is also the victim of a modern day sin - lack of parenting. His father (who lives in Las Vegas) doesn't want him, his grandparents don't want him, and he ends up under the temporary care of very aristocratic upper-crusty New Yorkers whose son is a classmate.

When his father finally appears to whisk him away to Las Vegas, Theo begins a terrifying fall into the pit of drugs, crime, and gambling debts, and a life-long friendship with Boris - son of a Russian immigrant who leads him down the garden path of adolescent misdeeds, misadventures and sometimes downright crime. 

As Boris and Theo mature (at least in age), so does their involvement in nefarious situations. Here is a picture of two young men, both very intelligent and cunning, with no moral compass and nothing to prevent them from becoming mired in page after page of "how did I get here and how do I get out of this?" There were times when I had to put the book down and let each adventure perk for awhile before I dared pick it up again to find out what could possible happen next. That Theo arrives alive at the end of this period of his life is as much a tribute to Tartt's writing skills as it is to the caprices of real life.

This is a major piece of fiction with more than the usual number of words. Normally, I'd be put off by its length, but Tartt uses words to paint pictures, to evoke feelings, to stimulate all our senses, so that we can place ourselves in the moment with Theo and all the powerfully portrayed  supporting cast of characters who exert some influence on his eventual arrival at adulthood. I'm not sure about the ending. But then, I'm sure that there are many who will love it. show less

I had to wait a few days to try and gather my thoughts a bit. I'm not sure how much progress I've made on that front, but here goes. This book is incredible. Not only is it beautifully-written, but it's heartbreaking, infuriating, moving. I love Tartt's characters, and I hate Tartt's characters. I've known a few Borises in my day and maybe an almost-Theo or two. Definitely some Kitseys. It's 771 pages that flew by like 200 and yet will stay with me for a long time.

It's fair to say this is a masterpiece - painstaking, detailed with love, agonized over, built up layer on layer, but the excruciating pace of this staggering tome nearly defeated me. I joked early that something only seemed to happen once every 100 pages; other than the burst of action in Amsterdam, I may have exaggerated. Theo takes self-absorption and self-destruction to new depths; tragically flawed and very human, but not a companion I enjoyed spending so much time with, and while Boris is entertaining, his violent charms don't attract me either. The 1% are as unpleasant here as in The Secret History, over-privileged, untouchable (the Barbours - impeccably sketched, and unwilling to believe the awful truth about their peers), show more detached from reality in every sense. Coldly beautiful; devoid of hope or redemption; not a book to read if you're feeling down on humanity. Star rating reflects my abiding unwilling delight in Tartt's prose. show less

771 pages: a large book by any standard. Unfortunately, because of teaching and other duties, I rarely have time to spend a couple of weeks on a behemoth of a novel. But several friends were so insistent I read Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, I decided during a break in grading to clear all other priorities and tackle this novel.

This might sound silly, but I actually enjoyed holding the book and feeling the silky smooth paper. Then I got to the novel, and I was completely blown away. This is my first experience with Donna Tartt, but I can guarantee it will not be my last.

Donna Tartt was born and raised in Mississippi, but she left the south for Bennington College in Vermont in 1982. She was raised in a family of voracious readers. She show more told one interviewer her mother read novels while driving. While at Bennington, she began writing her first novel, The Secret History, which became a bestseller. Her second novel, The Little Friend, won the prestigious W.H. Smith Award in 2002. Tartt is a slow writer – each of novels take about 10 years from conception to publication. The Goldfinch is her third novel. The detail in this compelling novel attests to the level of work that took ten years: she writes by hand on paper and note cards.

Theo Dexter lives in Manhattan with his, mother Audrey, a part-time model, actress, and artist. Theo’s father, an alcoholic with a gambling addiction abandoned the family about a year before the story begins. One day, Theo and his mother decide to stop into a museum to view some notable old masters on display. Theo spots an attractive young girl with red hair accompanied by an elderly man. He loses interest in the exhibit and begins to follow the young girl, when he is knocked to the ground by an explosion. Unhurt, Theo begins moving toward the exit now blocked. He encounters an elderly man, who has been mortally injured. He gives Theo a ring and asks him to take it to a certain address. The dying man also tells Theo to take a small painting which has fallen off the wall. This is The Goldfinch of the title. He does not see the young girl. He takes the ring to the address, and meets the elderly man’s business partner, Hobie. Together they ran an antique store. He learns that Pippa, the red headed girl, is recovering from her injuries at the home of Hobie and the elderly man, Mr. Blackwell. Meanwhile, Theo wraps the painting securely and hides it in his room. All this action occurs in about the first 50 pages.

However, I had absolutely no desire to abandon Theo, Pippa, and Hobie. Every page of this novel contains interesting characters, situations, descriptions, interior monologues of the highest order. I could not stop reading. The list of characters far exceeds the few I have mentioned here.

Janet Burroway, in her creative writing textbook, Writing Fiction, says, “every story must have a complication, crises , and resolution.” Tartt has filled this novel with a series of complications, which create one crisis after another for Theo, which he manages to resolve, through pluck, intelligence, and hard work.

Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch moves to the top of my list for the year, and perhaps the decade. I have rarely encountered a novel of such grace, beauty, heartbreak, sadness, joy, and with thrills, mysteries, and even some chilling moments sprinkled on almost every page. This novel has it all, and I could not urge myreaders more strongly to read this book as soon as possible. You will get to know Theo; you will become a part of his family; you will be forever affected by Tartt’s power as a storyteller. I have to raise my scale to 10 stars for this extraordinary novel, which I have just learned, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

--Jim, 4/13/14 show less

If you removed every third sentence from this book, I think you'd have a really powerful work that had a lot to say about the nature of loss and addiction, and about beauty and fate. As it were, there are about four hundred pages too many.

Far too often the author will come tantalizingly close to an emotionally satisfying moment, only to drown her reader in needless verbosity. The pacing is maddeningly inconsistent, with the plot at times grinding to a halt in order for our narrator to carefully describe everything he sees and hears (or to tell a nearly pointless anecdote, which is probably meant to offer the reader a history lesson and some insight into a particular character, but often ends up reading like a study guide for a high show more school exam). At other times you are whisked randomly into the future, only to have Theo explain what happened in the interim. The whole book suffers from a lot of telling versus showing. You never feel as if you're a part of events; they're always blandly related back to you after the fact. You are positively submerged in details, but none of them make the world your reading about feel any more real. It has the opposite, in fact. By leaving too little to the imagination, the author comes across as disingenuous, as if they’re trying to cover up a lie by piling on distracting details.

I have no problem with a flawed protagonist. It's essential. Without flaws, there can be no growth, and without growth you lack a compelling story. You have to give your character a chip on their shoulder so that they can struggle to remove it. Tartt's narrator, Theo, has no shortage of chips. What he lacks, however, are any qualities by which he can be redeemed. You can guess the trajectory that his character will take, and I'll admit I didn't hate wallowing in his vices (even if they were conveyed rather clinically; you simply have to take his word that he's an addict, much like you do with everything else he says), but his development never quite manages to get past them.

Perhaps that's the point, and that Theo represents the books central theme, that of obsession and fixation, as he feels more like a force that influences the other characters in the book rather than a fully developed character himself. You can feel the empty space that he should occupy, which at times feels like a glaring flaw in the book’s structure, whereas other times it helps put a spotlight on the books supporting characters, which, to the book’s credit, are rich and colorful.

Buried somewhere in this too large tome is a compelling story filled with some of the best characters I have read in a while. Had an editor been more ruthless in what they cut out, undoubtedly this would have been a masterpiece, although it very well may be anyway, warts and all. show less