The Goldfinch By Donna Tartt

Welcome to our Book Club. 

It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch combines vivid characters, mesmerising language, and suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

 

This book was my first introduction to Donna Tartt and I loved it so much I have gone on to read all her books.

Donna Tartt publishes a book once every decade, or that's the pattern she's followed since her first book (1992) and then her second (2002) and now this ( 2013). She's said she doesn't enjoy the process of creating a book in a faster manner and if she is not enjoying it then the reader won't either. 

If the outcome is always like this (and I say this, not having read her previews works) then I'll patiently wait a decade, a hundred years, if that's what I have to do in order to read a book of hers.

This book is a masterpiece of storytelling, following Theo through his life, it is heartbreaking in places and joyful in others. I don't want to spoil the book for you by going into too much detail. I want you to pick this book up with no clue whatsoever and read it and then let your feelings sink in and your mind soak in the meaning underneath this incredible piece of literature. Let the characters come alive in your mind and let the writing take you to dark places where life isn't as happy as we think it is, at least not for everyone. 

It's such a powerful book. 

 

Read along with us.

Our next read is An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.  It won the Women's prize for Fiction 2019.