The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

by Donna Tartt

976 pages

Published June 28, 2016 by Little, Brown and Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-05542-0

(146 reviews)

"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 …

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.

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.

25 editions

laura reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

None

5 stars

amazing book. i have no words.

theo decker being an elliott smith fan was a welcome surprise. makes perfect sense though, given his radiohead listening as a teenager, and his general predicament throughout the book. pretty (ugly before) is a great song.

"If there was one thing my opiated years had taught me (not to mention my years of antiques fraud), it was that starched shirts and suits fresh from the cleaners' went a long, long way toward hiding a multitude of sins —but I'd been loopy and careless from the morphine tabs, drifting around my bedroom and humming to Elliott Smith as I dressed, sunshine...been keeping me up for days ...and (I noticed) one of my cuffs wasn't done up properly. Moreover the knots I'd chosen weren't even a matched pair: one purple, the other blue."

(this is such a silly review i just really enjoyed the elliott smith …

markm reviewed The goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I think I see the strength of this novel, but I had a problem with it and I didn’t know and may not know now exactly what it is. I will write about it to see if anything turns up. The novel is long with some complexity. It is written as an account by the protagonist of his early life. The characters are very well realized and the author’s eye for detail in character, dialogue, and setting is excellent. The story is a tragic one and is many different things. It is a coming-of-age story, a love story, and a buddy story. It is sometimes funny. It is an elaborate, minute, and horrifying account of drug addiction. Also, the McGuffin, a small painting, is asked to carry a heavy load of significance. It is key to the plot’s turns, but its actual significance is, for me, unclear. The story churns along to its perhaps predictable ending, and then, in the last chapter, the author essentially makes an attempt to summarize the story’s significance through the voices of the protagonist, his Buddha-like mentor, and his criminal friend. But, to quote Pee-Wee Herman, “What’s the significance?”. If I had to pull as much as I could with my inadequate abilities out of this summary, i.e. summarize the summary, I guess I would say, “Life sucks and then you die, but there will be art.” Does the narrator really believe that he played a role in saving the painting that he stole himself? Should we be astonished that Boris avoids all consequences for his criminality? Is the narrator ultimately untouched by his murder simply because Boris said that the dead man was a bad person? One could assassinate many of the novel’s main characters and say the same thing. Several reviewers have compared this novel to Dickens, and I see what they mean, perhaps I am being too concrete. Finally, the author has Hobie say that all of In Search of Lost Time is in some ways about a moment when Swann falls in love with Odette because she resembles a girl in a painting by Botticelli that Swann had only seen in reproduction. I wonder if that is true. If Proust was right, and the only heaven on earth is the remembered past, what if our past is just theft, deception, a drunken stupor, and a murder we’ve blown off?
[Note of 9-29-22: It occurs to me that not only was the character Hobie correct but that a feature of Proust's great work is that many small parts of it are an encapsulation of the entire work - from the madeleine on.]

candimisms reviewed The goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I’m still really conflicted... I liked it, but I’m not attached to it or blown away by it. 3.5/5.

awboonstra reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Amazing. Dickensian with modern Holden Caulfield-ish narrator. Intoxicating rich prose. Love.

leighelse reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I made it. It's taken four weeks - the longest read I remember by some distance - but I gritted my teeth and kept pegging away. I'm been neither edified nor entertained by the gauntlet I've run. The central character of the book (no-one could call him a hero) is an improbable mix of spinelessness and self-assurance. The plot is tedious. I am glad it's over, and I'll approach any future Donna Tartt books with extreme caution.

Fionnáin reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Engaging character-driven storytelling in Tartt's book. Told as a tale of character growth from the point of view of Theo as he stumbles through life from the death of his mother in his early teens and his unlikely accidental inheritance of a painting masterpiece. Fast-paced novel with a style that is part parable, part 19th Century Russian literature, with a seamless, lifelike meaninglessness that is satisfying, funny and emotionally engaging.

Yukari reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Beautiful story. I loved reading about the protagonist's mother's memory but some parts were much too philosophical and almost tedious. I felt sorry the protagonist wasn't as happy as he should be.

Mark Anderson reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I enjoyed reading this, but there were a few times when I was frustrated by it. But somehow the plot always managed to keep me surprised just enough to keep with it. The characters are admittedly thin, but there's just enough depth layered into it to keep it good.

Baltipink reviewed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Tedious. I think I could have liked this book more if it were much shorter. But it's like somebody took a beach read plot and thought if they wrote long enough something profound would pop out. Was she getting paid by the word? I was really surprised how old the author is, because it doesn't read like someone who has lived past twenty. Or maybe it just reads like something the kind of ppl who love Woody Allen would like. Mostly I just kept thinking about that time someone on twitter said white ppl are narcissists and how this book might be exhibit a. If you want a meditation on the absurdity and tragedy of life, do yourself a favor and read a blissfully short Camus instead.