Editorial Reviews
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, October 2013: It's hard to articulate just how much--and why--The Goldfinch held such power for me as a reader. Always a sucker for a good boy-and-his-mom story, I probably was taken in at first by the cruelly beautiful passages in which 13-year-old Theo Decker tells of the accident that killed his beloved mother and set his fate. But even when the scene shifts--first Theo goes to live with his schoolmate’s picture-perfect (except it isn’t) family on Park Avenue, then to Las Vegas with his father and his trashy wife, then back to a New York antiques shop--I remained mesmerized. Along with Boris, Theo’s Ukrainian high school sidekick, and Hobie, one of the most wonderfully eccentric characters in modern literature, Theo--strange, grieving, effete, alcoholic and often not close to honorable Theo--had taken root in my heart. Still, The Goldfinch is more than a 700-plus page turner about a tragic loss: it’s also a globe-spanning mystery about a painting that has gone missing, an examination of friendship, and a rumination on the nature of art and appearances. Most of all, it is a sometimes operatic, often unnerving and always moving chronicle of a certain kind of life. “Things would have turned out better if she had lived,” Theo said of his mother, fourteen years after she died. An understatement if ever there was one, but one that makes the selfish reader cry out: Oh, but then we wouldn’t have had this brilliant book! --Sara Nelson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Donna Tartt's latest novel clocks in at an unwieldy 784 pages. 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. 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. 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. Theo's fate hinges on the painting, and both take on depth as it steers Theo's life. 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 is magnetic, perhaps because of his well-meaning criminality. The Goldfinch is a pleasure to read; with more economy to the brushstrokes, it might have been great. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Oct. 22) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Cataclysmic loss and rupture with criminal intent visited upon the young have been Tartt’s epic subjects as she creates one captivating and capacious novel a decade, from The Secret History (1992) to The Little Friend (2002) to this feverish saga. In the wake of his nefarious father’s abandonment, Theo, a smart, 13-year-old Manhattanite, is extremely close to his vivacious mother—until an act of terrorism catapults him into a dizzying world bereft of gravity, certainty, or love. Tartt writes from Theo’s point of view with fierce exactitude and magnetic emotion as, stricken with grief and post-traumatic stress syndrome, he seeks sanctuary with a troubled Park Avenue family and, in Greenwich Village, with a kind and gifted restorer of antique furniture. Fate then delivers Theo to utterly alien Las Vegas, where he meets young outlaw Boris. As Theo becomes a complexly damaged adult, Tartt, in a boa constrictor-like plot, pulls him deeply into the shadow lands of art, lashed to seventeenth-century Dutch artist Carel Fabritius and his exquisite if sinister painting, The Goldfinch. Drenched in sensory detail, infused with Theo’s churning thoughts and feelings, sparked by nimble dialogue, and propelled by escalating cosmic angst and thriller action, Tartt’s trenchant, defiant, engrossing, and rocketing novel conducts a grand inquiry into the mystery and sorrow of survival, beauty and obsession, and the promise of art.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Word of best-selling Tartt’s eagerly awaited third novel will travel fast and far via an author tour, interviews, and intense print, media, and online publicity. --Donna Seaman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"A soaring masterpiece."―Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Dazzling....A glorious, Dickensian novel, a novel that pulls together all Ms. Tartt's remarkable storytelling talents into a rapturous, symphonic whole and reminds the reader of the immersive, stay-up-all-night pleasures of reading."―Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"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, New York Times Book Review
"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....Joy and sorrow exist in the same breath, and by the end The Goldfinch hangs in our stolen heart."―Vanity Fair
"Drenched in sensory detail, infused with Theo's churning thoughts and feelings, sparked by nimble dialogue, and propelled by escalating cosmic angst and thriller action, Tartt's trenchant, defiant, engrossing, and rocketing novel conducts a grand inquiry into the mystery and sorrow of survival, beauty and obsession, and the promise of art."―Booklist (starred review)
"There's a bewitching urgency to the narration that's impossible to resist. Theo is magnetic...The Goldfinch is a pleasure to read."―Publishers Weekly
"A long-awaited, elegant meditation on love, memory, and the haunting power of art....Eloquent and assured, with memorable characters....A standout--and well-worth the wait."―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"It's a classic...If you haven't read it, read it. If you have, read it again."―Andy Cohen, Today Show
"Where to begin? Simply put, I'm indescribably jealous of any reader picking up this masterpiece for the first time. And once they do, they will long remember the heartrending character of Theo Decker and his unthinkable journey."―Sarah Jessica Parker for Goop
About the Author
Donna Tartt is the author of The Goldfinch, which was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her novels The Secret History and The Little Friend have been translated into 30 languages. She was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and is a graduate of Bennington College.
my review: I passed the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few days ago and was hit with an intense and at first odd despairing. I had been influenced by the experience of perusing The Goldfinch, in the opening parts of which an extraordinary catastrophe happens there. The book is convincing and moving. Tartt is an expert of anticipating, telling us sufficiently only of what is to come that we feel vulnerable to put down the book. I discovered myself staying up late for a few evenings, turning page after page to draw an obvious conclusion. This book is each piece the Secret's equivalent History in such manner. What's more, it surpasses that prior book in its incredible enthusiastic profundity. The opening area, in New York City, is unpleasantly pitiful and in the hands of a lesser creator this material would be hard to move beyond. Be that as it may, Tartt has flagged us all around ok about the fate of our hero, Theodore Dekker, that we stay with him. Also, from the second segment of the book, while we have no lack of proceeding with hopelessness, it is tempered by trust or amusingness.
This is not to say that the book is essentially practical; it is basically a Bildungsroman, and it always brings out prior books as opposed to genuine living. In the opening segment, when Theo is as yet living in New York City, I especially identified The Catcher in the Rye. When he moves in with the group of a well-off school companion, his trust of being received by them inspires components of Great Expectations, a book that is reviewed again when he comes back to them over 10 years after the fact to discover the family's lady close away like Miss Havisham (however for altogether different reasons). He is taken away to Las Vegas and falls in with a terrible group, bringing out Oliver Twist. As in that book, the peruser comprehends that some of this group give vital backing to the young fellow. Theo comes back to New York and, years after the fact, discovers himself investigating dull spots with Boris, his criminally slanted Las Vegas companion, taking the trail of a missing painting. This helped me to remember the best work of Stephen Dobyns. A few sections of the book even review The Maltese Falcon, however, the book regards its namesake craftsmanship as more than just a MacGuffin. Others will discover distinctive points of reference, I'm certain. This book is long and rich.
Tartt assumed control over 10 years to compose The Goldfinch, and cleaned its dialect over that time. In Las Vegas, for instance, Theo portrays his new quarters as "the sort of room where a call young lady or attendant would be killed on TV." Tartt has a ton of fun with the talking rhythm of tanked Russians (or Ukrainians), I need to envision she invests a considerable lot of energy with Slavs. Vernacular funniness is uncommon these days, however here it is finished with such love that it's harmless and frequently very clever.
I've not invested energy in the fizzled lodging improvements at the extremes of Las Vegas, nor with Ukrainian street pharmacists, however, Tartt depicts these universes so distinctively I don't question her portrayals of them by any means. The plotting's nature, the portrayals, and the dialog in this book are reliably phenomenal. As Stephen King composed of The Goldfinch in the New York Times Book Review, "You continue sitting tight for the wheels to tumble off, however . . . they never do."
What's not all that great? In spite of the fact that Tartt catches the nuances of a few various types of connections between men, vastly improved than I would have thought workable for a female creator, the connections between Theo Dekker and ladies never fully seem to be valid. One may give the reason that Theo is so harmed by the loss of his mom that he is never again fit for ordinary associations with the inverse sex, yet I think this clarification takes one just in this way.
The sections in which Theo packs for college placement tests appear to be difficult to accept and, strangely for a tome like this, surged.
At long last, and this is not Tartt's flaw, I'm certain, the paper in the hardcover version is too thin. I think the distributer flinched at accepting an 800-page original copy and chose to print on slim paper in the trust of making a less scary volume on book shop racks. At the point when perusing page 403, you need to disregard the regressive shadow of the words on page 404, overleaf.
Tartt handles wide topics in this book: to what degree would we be able to control our destiny? On the other hand does life unspool accordingly just to drives outside our ability to control, including arbitrariness? These are sufficiently normal points for writers, and I discovered myself harping especially on a book's percentage optional topics, as they are less usually examined. Will people make questions that have souls, and what commitment do we have to our manifestations, and is there any significant route in which ancient rarities make life worth living? What is the hugeness of validness, and can a duplicate ever be as noteworthy as the first? Could we be moved here and there by the nonappearance of something as much as we would have been by its vicinity? In a profile of Tartt on October 21, the New York Times said that this book brings up such issues as "whether it is conceivable to be great, what part love plays in our conduct and what in life is genuine and enduring."
Shop at bjewelu.com where discerning women over 50 shop
my review: I passed the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few days ago and was hit with an intense and at first odd despairing. I had been influenced by the experience of perusing The Goldfinch, in the opening parts of which an extraordinary catastrophe happens there. The book is convincing and moving. Tartt is an expert of anticipating, telling us sufficiently only of what is to come that we feel vulnerable to put down the book. I discovered myself staying up late for a few evenings, turning page after page to draw an obvious conclusion. This book is each piece the Secret's equivalent History in such manner. What's more, it surpasses that prior book in its incredible enthusiastic profundity. The opening area, in New York City, is unpleasantly pitiful and in the hands of a lesser creator this material would be hard to move beyond. Be that as it may, Tartt has flagged us all around ok about the fate of our hero, Theodore Dekker, that we stay with him. Also, from the second segment of the book, while we have no lack of proceeding with hopelessness, it is tempered by trust or amusingness.
This is not to say that the book is essentially practical; it is basically a Bildungsroman, and it always brings out prior books as opposed to genuine living. In the opening segment, when Theo is as yet living in New York City, I especially identified The Catcher in the Rye. When he moves in with the group of a well-off school companion, his trust of being received by them inspires components of Great Expectations, a book that is reviewed again when he comes back to them over 10 years after the fact to discover the family's lady close away like Miss Havisham (however for altogether different reasons). He is taken away to Las Vegas and falls in with a terrible group, bringing out Oliver Twist. As in that book, the peruser comprehends that some of this group give vital backing to the young fellow. Theo comes back to New York and, years after the fact, discovers himself investigating dull spots with Boris, his criminally slanted Las Vegas companion, taking the trail of a missing painting. This helped me to remember the best work of Stephen Dobyns. A few sections of the book even review The Maltese Falcon, however, the book regards its namesake craftsmanship as more than just a MacGuffin. Others will discover distinctive points of reference, I'm certain. This book is long and rich.
Tartt assumed control over 10 years to compose The Goldfinch, and cleaned its dialect over that time. In Las Vegas, for instance, Theo portrays his new quarters as "the sort of room where a call young lady or attendant would be killed on TV." Tartt has a ton of fun with the talking rhythm of tanked Russians (or Ukrainians), I need to envision she invests a considerable lot of energy with Slavs. Vernacular funniness is uncommon these days, however here it is finished with such love that it's harmless and frequently very clever.
I've not invested energy in the fizzled lodging improvements at the extremes of Las Vegas, nor with Ukrainian street pharmacists, however, Tartt depicts these universes so distinctively I don't question her portrayals of them by any means. The plotting's nature, the portrayals, and the dialog in this book are reliably phenomenal. As Stephen King composed of The Goldfinch in the New York Times Book Review, "You continue sitting tight for the wheels to tumble off, however . . . they never do."
What's not all that great? In spite of the fact that Tartt catches the nuances of a few various types of connections between men, vastly improved than I would have thought workable for a female creator, the connections between Theo Dekker and ladies never fully seem to be valid. One may give the reason that Theo is so harmed by the loss of his mom that he is never again fit for ordinary associations with the inverse sex, yet I think this clarification takes one just in this way.
The sections in which Theo packs for college placement tests appear to be difficult to accept and, strangely for a tome like this, surged.
At long last, and this is not Tartt's flaw, I'm certain, the paper in the hardcover version is too thin. I think the distributer flinched at accepting an 800-page original copy and chose to print on slim paper in the trust of making a less scary volume on book shop racks. At the point when perusing page 403, you need to disregard the regressive shadow of the words on page 404, overleaf.
Tartt handles wide topics in this book: to what degree would we be able to control our destiny? On the other hand does life unspool accordingly just to drives outside our ability to control, including arbitrariness? These are sufficiently normal points for writers, and I discovered myself harping especially on a book's percentage optional topics, as they are less usually examined. Will people make questions that have souls, and what commitment do we have to our manifestations, and is there any significant route in which ancient rarities make life worth living? What is the hugeness of validness, and can a duplicate ever be as noteworthy as the first? Could we be moved here and there by the nonappearance of something as much as we would have been by its vicinity? In a profile of Tartt on October 21, the New York Times said that this book brings up such issues as "whether it is conceivable to be great, what part love plays in our conduct and what in life is genuine and enduring."
Shop at bjewelu.com where discerning women over 50 shop
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