Thursday, January 04, 2018

Book Review: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

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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 combines vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art.  It is an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

3/5 stars (liked it)
This story spans several years.  It starts out with thirteen year old Theo.  We see his relationship with his mother and how close they were.  Then they are bombed in a museum and his mother dies.  He gets away with a painting, The Goldfinch, which becomes a center of the whole book.  Theo moves in with a rich family, then ends up living with his estranged father in Las Vegas.  While in Las Vegas he meets a strange boy named Boris.  I really like Boris and wish we could have had some of the story with his point of view.  After loosing his father, he moves back to NY and lives with an antiques dealer.  Then several years pass and Theo is grown up.  He's engaged, but not truly happy.  We meet old friends and things wrap up with the painting.  I didn't feel like the book had a true ending.

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