7/5/2023 0 Comments The goldfinch bookThe Goldfinch is a pleasure to read with more economy to the brushstrokes, it might have been great. Theo is magnetic, perhaps because of his well-meaning criminality. Some sentences are clunky (“suddenly” and “meanwhile” abound), metaphors are repetitive (Theo’s mother is compared to birds three times in 10 pages), and plot points are overly coincidental (as if inspired by TV), but there’s a bewitching urgency to the narration that’s impossible to resist. Theo’s fate hinges on the painting, and both take on depth as it steers Theo’s life. With the same flair for suspense that made The Secret History (1992) such a masterpiece, The Goldfinch features the pulp of a typical bildungsroman-Theo’s dissolution into teenage delinquency and climb back out, his passionate friendship with the very funny Boris, his obsession with Pippa (a girl he first encounters minutes before the explosion)-but the painting is the novel’s secret heart. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive. Shootouts, gangsters, pillowcases, storage lockers, and the black market for art all play parts in the ensuing life of the painting in Theo’s care. The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. The story begins with an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum that kills narrator Theo Decker’s beloved mother and results in his unlikely possession of a Dutch masterwork called The Goldfinch. The Goldfinch is a book about art in all its forms, and right from the start we remember why we enjoy Donna Tartt so much: the humming plot and elegant prose the living, breathing characters the perfectly captured settings. Donna Tartt’s latest novel clocks in at an unwieldy 784 pages.
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