This is a book for readers. Correction, this is a gift for readers. For those who love escaping in the pages, and find themselves caring deeply about the characters who are revealed within them. This is a gift. A big, heart thumping, book so real you can feel it gift. That The Goldfinch won a Pulitzer Prize is not a surprise to me. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's a finely crafted, gracefully written, surprisingly accessible piece of masterwork fiction. I have a suspicion it may just be the best book I'll read this year.
The story follows Theo Decker, a young teen whose mother is killed in a horrible terrorist attack. In the midst of the attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Theo escapes the grisly scene with a copy of Fabritius' The Goldfinch (you can read more about the painting here). A 1654 masterpiece whose story and description were lost with time, as Fabritius himself, and much of his other works were destroyed in a fire at his studio.
As a reader, we know only what Theo knows. We are shown the world through his eyes, and Tartt does a magnificent job telling us only what we need to know. She doesn't over explain, she doesn't extrapolate. We can think outside Theo's sphere, but not because the author herself has made any attempt to add in a narrator's interpretation. So there are some details of events in the book that seem so limited, but in a way, perfectly true to the story and the world created through Theo.
Theo is a flawed character, and I loved him the better for it. I never felt he was out of opportunities to make his life better, to overcome his trauma and the short shrift he was given in the life department. And Theo himself is aware of all this as well. It's like sharing in on a good friend's shame, and loving him despite all of it.
There are so many twists in Theo's life, but Tartt knows just when to cut ahead in time and save us some of the banal sorrow that would have drug the piece down into tedious pace.
5/5 Stars.
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