Last month, my book club voted to read Donna Tartt's new novel, The Goldfinch.
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This book is 800-something pages, so many of the book clubbers were discouraged by the sheer volume and decided to read something else. Me, on the other hand, I downloaded that bad boy to my Kindle and never thought twice about the heft. I sped my way through this book and enjoyed every minute.
The novel opens with 13-year-old Theo Decker and his mom on their way to his school in Manhattan to meet the principal to talk about why trouble-maker Theo was expelled. They stop in at the MET to see Mrs. Decker's favorite painting. They never make it to the meeting with the principal because about 10 pages in, there is an explosion at the MET killing Mrs. Decker. After Theo recovers from the shock of the explosion, he escapes the museum taking The Goldfinch painting with him.
The rest of the book follows Theo through the rest of his adolescence and on to adulthood navigating the loss of his mother, the struggle of what to do with the painting and the perpetual bad choices that he makes.
Slate's Bookclub Podcast said they thought the book was long and a little slow when the characters went to Las Vegas, and while I would mostly agree, I didn't mind. The book was so beautifully written that I felt like I was lazily watching a movie, not reading an 800-page book. I loved being in the world that Tartt created and I was engrossed in the suspense of what trouble Theo would create for himself next.
Have you read The Goldfinch? I'm curious to know what you thought?
