The Goldfinch

Author: Donna Tartt

Rating: ⭐ 5/5

Date Read: 2013/12/21

Pages: 771

Wow. That was probably the quickest 771 pages I’ve ever read. Usually, after reading a novel of that size, I feel something like a hangover, as if I’ve gone overboard and need to reign myself in (usually with 200-ish page non-fiction books). I didn’t feel that way upon finishing The Goldfinch. In fact, I felt like reading it again. That, to me, is enough to place it on my dear ones shelf (along with the fact that I’ve been talking it up incessantly, and forcing myself to not read it, so that I can spend just a little bit more time with Theo).

The Goldfinch is a painting by the Dutch artist, Fabritius. It looks like this:



It’s a beautiful painting, although I’ve never seen it. I stared at it quite a bit while I read, loading up a tiny version of it on my iPhone, zooming in to look at the little chain that leashed the bird to its perch. However, for whatever reason, it reminded me of another painting, a somewhat more famous painting, that I find myself stopping by for a quick visit fairly often when I’m at the Art Institute of Chicago, even though I’ve seen it a gazillion times:



The interesting thing about Nighthawks isn’t really what’s going on in the painting: some people at a restaurant in a banal diner on an anonymous corner in New York. No, what’s really striking are the details: they’re missing. The couple sitting at the bar each drink only an austere cup of coffee, but no food, no menus. They’re not interacting. The counter doesn’t have a cash register. The walls are bare. The street is empty; the building across the street has no identifying marks, the storefronts are empty, the lights are off, the residents seem to be gone. So really, the thing that makes you keep looking is the fact that the scene is missing all these things we’d expect to see. And, like Nighthawks, Theo, the protagonist of The Goldfinch, is almost tragically defined by the things that are taken from him.

What follows is my summary of The Goldfinch (the novel). It’s vague and mostly useless, and you’d do better to just stop reading this and go read The Goldfinch for yourself.

The Tragedy: It’s hard for me to say anything about this without spoiling it. Honestly, the less you know about the tragedy, the better. All I can say is that the entire scene is haunting: it kept me up for about an hour, just reading, and then another hour or so, thinking about it. It’s perfectly written, and I expect to keep coming back to the image of a beautiful woman walking up the stairs of The Met, umbrella in hand, with Rachmaninoff playing in the background (my addition, but it seems fitting).

The Fallout: Las Vegas, Nevada, in all it’s glory. A diaphanous cloud of adolescent anguish, in all its desperate glory. Bad decisions, bad people, but still that sparkling veneer of glamour gives the entire location an artificial glow.

The Return: But it all has to come back to New York, doesn’t it? A New York that’s haunted by the ghost of lives that could have been, filled with places that evoke memories that may or may not be wanted.

The Redemption?: Well, that’s up for you to decide.