Review: The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

''And there was something festive and happy about the two of us, hurrying up the steps beneath the flimsy candy-stripped umbrella, quick quick quick, for all the world as if we were escaping something terrible instead of running right into it."

The cover was interesting enough to pick up the book. Picture of a bird or a goldfinch as the reader finds out while reading. The beginning was like taking a dive into deep calm sea. Smooth and refreshing. A life-changing experience of a few hours described in great lengths, just what it deserved. The author uses her power of wit, analogies and lengthy description throughout the book. And she does it so smoothly the reader won't notice how many pages have been turned already.

So the story begins with Theo, a teenager, being faced with a tragic loss in life. Something we all experience except the lucky ones. He finds himself homeless and hopeless but life has its own ways of being moving forward. Infinite possibilities and one is selected. For Theo a painting, The Goldfinch is chosen by the author around which Theo's whole life revolves. Reader is already gripped.

"I was silent. Andy, I knew, was loyal. I trusted him. I valued his opinion, and yet his conversation sometimes made me feel as though I was talking to one of those computer programs that mimic human response."

For sometime Theo stays at Barbours' while being still in grief over his loss. Then one day someone shows up and he has to move faraway from home. There, faraway in the almost deserted neighborhood, he meets Boris. A special character in the book. They end up being loyal and corrupt friends. But then Theo has to move again after an incident. He returns back home, not with Boris but with a terrier.

"Yet it still felt like the last night in out old apartment on Seventh Avenue, my mother and father and I sitting atop cardboard boxes to eat our Chinese take out dinner."

He returns home with a apparently well kept secret as well. The author's power of story telling makes this seemingly dull plot quite amusing and interesting. Not knowing where to go Theo knocks at Hobie's. Then he tries to enter into some formal education system but ends up becoming an apprentice to Hobie who deals with all sorts of antique stuff. How Theo and Hobie are acquainted?

"No, seriously, " I said, laughing, raising up to my elbows. "Did you really believe in all that?"
"All what?"
"You know. Allah and Muhammad. 'There is no God but God'--?"
"No," he said, a bit angrily, "my Islam was a political thing,"

Time moves fast as it always does. And all this time Theo has no idea where Boris is or what he is up to. He hasn't met Barbours' due to a reason. Eventually his paths cross with both and story begins to pace up. More than 500 pages already gone.

''Likely you will end up in jail, Potter. Loose morals, slave to the economy. Very bad citizen, you"

Boris tells him a secret and Theo's old secret was not a secret anymore which Boris didn't know that Theo didn't know. Now Boris feels sorry and wants to payback by all means. For Theo the painting has become...He wants it back more than Boris.

"There were classes where you built solar panels and had seminars with Nobel-winning economists, and classes where all you did was listen to Tupac records or watch old episodes of Twin Peaks."

"Casual, but with unease of a parent wondering if an erratic teenager is really going to be okay taking the car out."

Then there is Pippa, Theo's unattainable and teenage love. Sad. Theo's thoughts and expressions around her are described in such a beautiful manner. Why not just let them be together. But somethings are meant to remain like this.

"Kitsey was far from stupid. Not only had she arranged for the marriage that would most please her mother; she was sleeping with the person she really loved"

There is Kitsey as well to whom Theo's is getting married. Four stars and not five stars just because of the plot. It could have been more powerful. Four stars given for the author's prolonged yet powerful style of narration.

"And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about the suffering here, or at least my understanding of it -- although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand."

And just when you are about to reach the bottom, you find yourself searching for one while there is none available. Lessons and realities of life hit you instead. More than 800 pages gone. The book is finished.

View all my reviews