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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
This book holds a special place in my heart, as it was the basis for my graduate thesis.
It tells the story of Theo Decker, a thirteen year old boy whose mother is killed in a terrorist attack while they are visiting a museum in New York. Theo survives and immediately clings to a painting that also survives the devastation: Carel Fabritius's The Goldfinch, which happes to be his mother's favorite painting. Over the years, Theo deals with grief, friendships, addiction, and various relationships, all while remaining obsessed with the painting —tough he doesn't fully understand why.
I was fascinated by Theo's obsession with the painting, so I decided to analyze the book using the Psychological Approach to Literature and various theories about grief. This analysis helped me realize how remarkable Donna Tartt's work with this book really was. Beyond the qualities that make a good book —such as compelling plots and subplots, and a good writing style— Tartt masterfully represents the profound complexities of grief through Theo's connection with the painting.
Not only is the painting the only connection that Theo has with the moment when he last saw his mother alive, but it also represents the last thing that she truly enjoyed, her last life experience, her last moment of happiness, and her last sight. For The Goldfinch's eyes are the last thing her eyes ever saw, and The Goldfinch's eyes are the last to see hers.
As for the book itself, I must admit it is dense, so I can understand why some reviewers have said it is a heavy book which at times can feel slow and difficult. In my case, however, I really enjoyed the entire story and it was only after I finished it that I decided to use it for my thesis. Donna Tartt's writing style in this book is beautiful, and I will definitely make time to read her other books. Overall, it was a profound and unforgettable reading experience.
It tells the story of Theo Decker, a thirteen year old boy whose mother is killed in a terrorist attack while they are visiting a museum in New York. Theo survives and immediately clings to a painting that also survives the devastation: Carel Fabritius's The Goldfinch, which happes to be his mother's favorite painting. Over the years, Theo deals with grief, friendships, addiction, and various relationships, all while remaining obsessed with the painting —tough he doesn't fully understand why.
I was fascinated by Theo's obsession with the painting, so I decided to analyze the book using the Psychological Approach to Literature and various theories about grief. This analysis helped me realize how remarkable Donna Tartt's work with this book really was. Beyond the qualities that make a good book —such as compelling plots and subplots, and a good writing style— Tartt masterfully represents the profound complexities of grief through Theo's connection with the painting.
Not only is the painting the only connection that Theo has with the moment when he last saw his mother alive, but it also represents the last thing that she truly enjoyed, her last life experience, her last moment of happiness, and her last sight. For The Goldfinch's eyes are the last thing her eyes ever saw, and The Goldfinch's eyes are the last to see hers.
As for the book itself, I must admit it is dense, so I can understand why some reviewers have said it is a heavy book which at times can feel slow and difficult. In my case, however, I really enjoyed the entire story and it was only after I finished it that I decided to use it for my thesis. Donna Tartt's writing style in this book is beautiful, and I will definitely make time to read her other books. Overall, it was a profound and unforgettable reading experience.
i loved this, i think theo might be one of my favorite characters ever. took me so long to read though !
*Pro tip for anyone reading this book: I enjoyed looking at pictures of the artworks mentioned while reading. I found a blog post in which all the paintings are pictured with the piece of text where they are mentioned in the book. Definitely a must do while reading!*
This book unites three elements that are indispensable in my life; reading, old paintings by the Dutch masters and the Netherlands itself. So naturally, I just hád to read it.
It was my first Donna Tartt book, and woww the writing style is phenomenal. You are immediately sucked into the story and you experience it as if you were there yourself. How she describes a scene or an atmosphere is just downright amazing.
I also felt so close to the characters in the story! They all have a certain depth and background story that makes them really come to life as you read and you feel like they are real people you know in real life.
As the reader I actually felt so close to them, I also got a sparkle of their passion for certain things I know nothing about. For example antique furniture -not my hobby or interest, but I got excited about it just because of the way it is described. It was like I was there; I could almost smell the sawdust in the workplace, feel the veins in the old wood... okay, see, i got carried away in all this passion. My point exactly.
The story actually always goes at a slow, friendly pace, so I was a bit shocked when I finished a part/chapter and suddenly the next part turned out to be eight years later (and this was also casually said in one sentence). Overall I enjoyed the slow pace and let myself be carried away with it.
The only thing about the story where I experienced a little bit of annoyance... is when Dutch is often confused with German words or phrases (mostly always by Americans). So if you want to give the Netherlands or Dutch a prominent place in your book, do it right and do your research. I know it looks and sounds alike, but it's a whole different country and language.
Anyway.
The main character's pessimistic tone, especially towards the end, doesn't make him unlikable to me - it makes him human. It's nice that at the end a clear message is given based on the object that ultimately the whole book is about; the goldfinch painting. The symbolism and the way in which you will learn to look at the painting is beautiful. Depth with a touch of melancholy: that pretty much sums up the moral of the painting (and.. actually the entire book) in a few words.
Allright, now I'm going to schedule a day to watch the movie and go to the museum to see the painting in real life (like the whole time I've been reading about an adventure that seems to go all over the world while the actual painting itself is just 50 minute drive away from me?? crazy!!)
This book unites three elements that are indispensable in my life; reading, old paintings by the Dutch masters and the Netherlands itself. So naturally, I just hád to read it.
It was my first Donna Tartt book, and woww the writing style is phenomenal. You are immediately sucked into the story and you experience it as if you were there yourself. How she describes a scene or an atmosphere is just downright amazing.
I also felt so close to the characters in the story! They all have a certain depth and background story that makes them really come to life as you read and you feel like they are real people you know in real life.
As the reader I actually felt so close to them, I also got a sparkle of their passion for certain things I know nothing about. For example antique furniture -not my hobby or interest, but I got excited about it just because of the way it is described. It was like I was there; I could almost smell the sawdust in the workplace, feel the veins in the old wood... okay, see, i got carried away in all this passion. My point exactly.
The story actually always goes at a slow, friendly pace, so I was a bit shocked when I finished a part/chapter and suddenly the next part turned out to be eight years later (and this was also casually said in one sentence). Overall I enjoyed the slow pace and let myself be carried away with it.
The only thing about the story where I experienced a little bit of annoyance... is when Dutch is often confused with German words or phrases (mostly always by Americans). So if you want to give the Netherlands or Dutch a prominent place in your book, do it right and do your research. I know it looks and sounds alike, but it's a whole different country and language.
Anyway.
The main character's pessimistic tone, especially towards the end, doesn't make him unlikable to me - it makes him human. It's nice that at the end a clear message is given based on the object that ultimately the whole book is about; the goldfinch painting. The symbolism and the way in which you will learn to look at the painting is beautiful. Depth with a touch of melancholy: that pretty much sums up the moral of the painting (and.. actually the entire book) in a few words.
Allright, now I'm going to schedule a day to watch the movie and go to the museum to see the painting in real life (like the whole time I've been reading about an adventure that seems to go all over the world while the actual painting itself is just 50 minute drive away from me?? crazy!!)
The experience of reading The Goldfinch is very much like having a terrible roommate: the one who comes home late at night and pukes unceremoniously on the carpet, leaves their dishes in the sink for days, yet you still remember them with a bittersweet fondness because they were in the trenches with you of that moldy, cockroach-infested apartment of which the landlord is definitely overcharging you for. Having spent over a long, hard, grueling month with it, I feel it deserves a thought-out review, if only to help me move on to the next book.
First of all, Donna Tartt is an incredible writer. Her prose is so immersive and fluid, it's as if you are the narrator himself. Theo’s inner thoughts and anxieties are detailed in such a way that they feel like your own (and by God does he have a lot of them). I’ve never been to Las Vegas in my life, but the part set in Vegas is so richly captured I could imagine myself there, wasting away my youth in the desert suburbs, watching the heat shimmer, smelling the mix of alcohol, weed, sweat, and vomit. Images that would otherwise evoke disgust and pity are rendered hauntingly beautiful. Each sentence is like a brushstroke, each part a section of canvas, and all the parts are necessary to form the greater picture.
Except the greater picture isn’t particularly interesting. At first I had no idea what direction Theo’s story would go in, but as the book progressed from his tragic childhood to his tragic adolescence to his tragic young adulthood, it became clear the only real takeaway was that Theo is so burdened with problems of such catastrophic magnitude that it’s almost comical how shitty his life is. As soon as I read the scene where Boris and Theo listen to Radiohead together, I knew these guys were doomed. His grand, sweeping conclusion about life at the end is that the “basic fact of existence…is catastrophe… Better never born, than born in this cesspool.” And you know what? That would be my conclusion too if my mom died in a terrorist bombing, then I got sent to live with my alcoholic gambler dad who abandoned me and my mom, then my alcoholic gambler dad who abandoned me and my mom died, then I got addicted to opioids, then my friend who took me in after my mom died died. Oh, and my unrequited love met someone else. And my fiancé cheated on me. And I killed someone.
The Goldfinch paints a world that exists in the mind of a depressed, traumatized young man, and that world is painted in only black and white. There are the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, the people who are okay and the people who aren’t. In this world, acts of good are a useless currency and acts of evil are worth their weight in gold. Yes, life isn’t an endless buffet of joy, happiness, and sunshine. Whoever thinks that probably has a trust fund or really good drugs or both. But nihilism is just as boring and far more dangerous.
Theo finds his redemption in a painting that he steals from the art museum after the bombing. The Goldfinch is a symbol of his pain, an object of comfort, and a force pushing him into the underworld of art theft, hard drugs, and crime rings. It also represents an ideal of artistic beauty that is apparent not just in The Goldfinch but also The Secret History. Incidentally, I have similar problems with The Secret History, in that it is also a novel that is rich in language and ideas but hollow at its core.
Theo’s self-identification with his tragedy manifests as an obsession with the painting, which he cherishes and frets over more than any other human being we see him interact with. People are impermanent, but objects, with the proper care and attention, are forever. Love can be immortalized in an object in a way it can’t with living things. But while I understand the message of art “speaking to one's soul” and the joy of finding art that seems to call specifically to you, The Goldfinch takes this feeling and distorts it into something awful, like how the characters of The Secret History take their classical education to horrible, violent, and grotesque extremes.
I don’t know exactly how to feel about this book, but right now, I'm mostly glad it's over. There is a sense of closure and relief at the end when the painting leaves Theo's possession and is returned to the art authorities, like learning an illness is finally in remission. It feels like progress in the right direction, even if it took nearly 800 pages to get there.
First of all, Donna Tartt is an incredible writer. Her prose is so immersive and fluid, it's as if you are the narrator himself. Theo’s inner thoughts and anxieties are detailed in such a way that they feel like your own (and by God does he have a lot of them). I’ve never been to Las Vegas in my life, but the part set in Vegas is so richly captured I could imagine myself there, wasting away my youth in the desert suburbs, watching the heat shimmer, smelling the mix of alcohol, weed, sweat, and vomit. Images that would otherwise evoke disgust and pity are rendered hauntingly beautiful. Each sentence is like a brushstroke, each part a section of canvas, and all the parts are necessary to form the greater picture.
Except the greater picture isn’t particularly interesting. At first I had no idea what direction Theo’s story would go in, but as the book progressed from his tragic childhood to his tragic adolescence to his tragic young adulthood, it became clear the only real takeaway was that Theo is so burdened with problems of such catastrophic magnitude that it’s almost comical how shitty his life is. As soon as I read the scene where Boris and Theo listen to Radiohead together, I knew these guys were doomed. His grand, sweeping conclusion about life at the end is that the “basic fact of existence…is catastrophe… Better never born, than born in this cesspool.” And you know what? That would be my conclusion too if my mom died in a terrorist bombing, then I got sent to live with my alcoholic gambler dad who abandoned me and my mom, then my alcoholic gambler dad who abandoned me and my mom died, then I got addicted to opioids, then my friend who took me in after my mom died died. Oh, and my unrequited love met someone else. And my fiancé cheated on me. And I killed someone.
The Goldfinch paints a world that exists in the mind of a depressed, traumatized young man, and that world is painted in only black and white. There are the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, the people who are okay and the people who aren’t. In this world, acts of good are a useless currency and acts of evil are worth their weight in gold. Yes, life isn’t an endless buffet of joy, happiness, and sunshine. Whoever thinks that probably has a trust fund or really good drugs or both. But nihilism is just as boring and far more dangerous.
Theo finds his redemption in a painting that he steals from the art museum after the bombing. The Goldfinch is a symbol of his pain, an object of comfort, and a force pushing him into the underworld of art theft, hard drugs, and crime rings. It also represents an ideal of artistic beauty that is apparent not just in The Goldfinch but also The Secret History. Incidentally, I have similar problems with The Secret History, in that it is also a novel that is rich in language and ideas but hollow at its core.
Theo’s self-identification with his tragedy manifests as an obsession with the painting, which he cherishes and frets over more than any other human being we see him interact with. People are impermanent, but objects, with the proper care and attention, are forever. Love can be immortalized in an object in a way it can’t with living things. But while I understand the message of art “speaking to one's soul” and the joy of finding art that seems to call specifically to you, The Goldfinch takes this feeling and distorts it into something awful, like how the characters of The Secret History take their classical education to horrible, violent, and grotesque extremes.
I don’t know exactly how to feel about this book, but right now, I'm mostly glad it's over. There is a sense of closure and relief at the end when the painting leaves Theo's possession and is returned to the art authorities, like learning an illness is finally in remission. It feels like progress in the right direction, even if it took nearly 800 pages to get there.
Me starting a Donna Tartt book: “there’s no way all of this information can be relevant!”
Me finishing a Donna Tartt book: “oh my god it was all relevant!!!”
“clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet— for me, anyway-all that's worth living for lies in that charm?”
Me finishing a Donna Tartt book: “oh my god it was all relevant!!!”
“clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet— for me, anyway-all that's worth living for lies in that charm?”
after letting this book rot away on my shelf for such a long time i finally picked it up and oh my god why did i not read this sooner. this had me hooked from the start. the story, the characters, the relationships, all of it was so interesting. it could be very slow at times and yet I was never bored. i flew through this book. i was scared to pick it up at first bc its so chunky and i didnt want it to not be enjoyable but i was so into it that the book was over before i could blink.
i don't know if i'd consider this book perfect -- i kept wanting to slash through sentences with a red line, the crime section in amsterdam is tedious to get through -- but. but. i think something inside of me has been changed forever, and isn't it fitting that tartt ends this book with a love letter to art, and love itself?
challenging
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes