Book Review: The Goldfinch By Donna Tartt

 The Goldfinch 

By Donna Tartt 

Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014

Release Year: 2013

Page Count: 900 pages 

Medium Used: Kindle PW 

Genre : Coming-of-age, Contemporary, Drama, 2024-read. 

Rating : 5/5 

A compulsive page turner. I was reading so fast and the writing is so vivid, it felt like flying through time and space. I felt the book is a tad too long and at places, too descriptive which could have been shortened. But nonetheless, a very worthy read. I could pick one and very important message out of this book : good can come out of bad actions and bad can result from actions of good intent. And no one can really determine what happens but leaving it all to chance and hoping for the best. 

A young kid of 12 loses his mother to a bomb blast in a museum in New York. He is one of the survivors and while escaping from the debris and the museum, he steals a random painting. It is the Goldfinch painting by Fabritius, 1654. He comes to associate the painting with the memory of his mother who loved it very much. He holds it very dear to him, like his most prized possession. He lives with his friend’s family for a while after her death and then his father comes to take him off to Las Vegas. He takes the painting with him. He lives there with his father, his girlfriend Xandra and a new friend Boris before returning to New York for good. He thinks and comes to believe the painting is still in his possession. He becomes a partner in art dealing shop and does many shady dealings. Eventually, someone connects him to the missing painting and all the fake furniture he is selling. How does he get out of it ? How does he get out of the maze like situation where he can’t see an escape without destroying the painting ? What role does Boris have to play in all this? 

The author’s voice and narration in the first person on the main character is so realistic that I felt bad for him. I wondered if his life would have turned the way it had if his mother was still with him. Makes us question why some people have to go through so much suffering  and what it takes to barely escape a disastrous fate. As he grows, he becomes a compulsive drinker and drug abuser. Whatever is available on the market, he keeps popping into his system. To stay and feel alive. He loves a girl who also is a part of the memories of that bomb blast which claimed his mother’s life. But she doesn’t love him the way he wants. So that’s an endless yearning for him. 

Intriguing read!