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A review by rachelditty
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Picked this up after watching the movie with a friend. I downloaded the audiobook to listen to while I moved into my new apartment. Ended up listening to the last 9 hours in one sitting, and I was completely transfixed by the last two hours. Theo's address to the reader at the end really got to me, and I think this was a good story for me to read at this transitional stage in my early twenties. I definitely want to get a physical copy to put flags in. What a wonderful read.
Some quotes:
"Cool, quiet rooms, where old things slept."
"It occurred to me, that if I didn't already know how my mother had died, no power on Earth could have convinced me they hadn't murdered her."
"...standing up and stretching so that a band of stomach showed between his fatigues and ragged shirt, concave, dead white, like a starved saint's."
"More than anything, I was relieved that in my unfamiliar, babbling and wanting to talk state, I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thig I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street, which was, of course, I love you."
"My heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong."
"Well, let's put it another way. Who was it said that coincidence was just God's way of remaining anonymous?"
"To try to make some meaning out of this seems unbelievably quaint. Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then again, to paraphrase, Boris, maybe I see a pattern because it's there."
"And who knows? But maybe that's what's waiting for us at the end of the journey. A majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves walking through the doors of it, what we find ourselves gazing at in astonishment when God finally takes his hands off our eyes, and says, 'look!'"
"Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important; whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair."
"And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them, while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the end of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next."
Some quotes:
"Cool, quiet rooms, where old things slept."
"It occurred to me, that if I didn't already know how my mother had died, no power on Earth could have convinced me they hadn't murdered her."
"...standing up and stretching so that a band of stomach showed between his fatigues and ragged shirt, concave, dead white, like a starved saint's."
"More than anything, I was relieved that in my unfamiliar, babbling and wanting to talk state, I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thig I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street, which was, of course, I love you."
"My heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong."
"Well, let's put it another way. Who was it said that coincidence was just God's way of remaining anonymous?"
"To try to make some meaning out of this seems unbelievably quaint. Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then again, to paraphrase, Boris, maybe I see a pattern because it's there."
"And who knows? But maybe that's what's waiting for us at the end of the journey. A majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves walking through the doors of it, what we find ourselves gazing at in astonishment when God finally takes his hands off our eyes, and says, 'look!'"
"Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important; whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair."
"And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them, while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the end of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next."
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Blood, Suicide attempt, Addiction, Alcohol, Bullying, Car accident, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Mental illness, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, and Child abuse