The Goldfinch
2013
- goldfinch
- fiction
- self-realization
- loss (psychology)
- artists
- young men
- fiction, coming of age
- new york (n.y.), fiction
- artists, fiction
- fiction, psychological
The story
"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
What it’s like
Dense, lamplit prose with the slow, observant weight of a nineteenth-century novel set in modern New York: wet pavements, hushed Park Avenue apartments, and cluttered antiques-shop interiors thick with varnish, gilt frames and turpentine. Later the palette shifts to the hard glare of Las Vegas motels and the grey canals and cramped rooms of Amsterdam. The voice is confiding and digressive, rich in objects and art history, so it reads like a long, close conversation with a guilty narrator, best sunk into over a slow week. The mood is melancholy and obsessive, with a dread that tightens steadily toward the final act. Violence is present and often sudden, including a catastrophic opening and brutal, bloody deaths and beatings later. There is heavy drinking, drug use, and frank sexual content that is not explicit. The tone is elegiac and absorbing, with bursts of suspense. It suits readers who love sprawling, character-heavy novels about grief, loyalty, and the lives people build from what they have lost, and who can tolerate a long, dark stretch for immersive atmosphere.
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