Here's what I wrote in 2014 about this read: "Hmmm, won the Publizer prize but was panned by some. Very long, with a definitely flawed hero. Interesting to learn more about the art world and the Goldfinch painting specifically. Getting weary of novels involving drug junkies and suicidal tendencies (really). Depressing stuff even if it is very much present in our current society. Based on reviews, would be interested to read her first book, The Secret History." ( )

While not every artwork is for everyone, great art can have a powerful effect on the viewer. The title work of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch is a small painting by Carel Fabritius, showing the namesake bird perched on a feeder to which it is chained. Theo Decker first sees it on what is the worst day of his life. In trouble for getting into some adolescent mischief, he and his mother have been summoned to the principal's office. With time to kill before their meeting, they stop at the MoMA to see an exhibition that includes the title artwork. Theo likes the paintings, but is mostly busy paying attention to a lovely red-haired girl about his age, accompanied by a much older man. He's just spotted her again by the gift shop when his mother goes back to take one last look at the art...and then the bomb goes off. When Theo comes to, the old man he'd seen with the pretty redhead directs him to take The Goldfinch off the wall and keep it, and then dies.

Theo returns home, and when he learns of his mother's death, he's taken in by the upper-crust family of a school friend. He also forges a connection with Hobie, the business partner of the old man, who turns out to have been the great-uncle of Pippa, the red-headed girl he finally actually meets. Of course once Theo is finding some stability and solace, his father (who'd left the family and New York quite a while before) suddenly reappears, taking Theo back with him to his new home in Las Vegas. While there, the traumatized Theo meets fellow damaged teen Boris, who introduces him to drugs and alcohol. After another tragedy strikes, Theo takes back off to New York, going to Hobie for support, and eventually growing up to become his new partner in the antique shop he runs. But when a mysterious customer hints that he knows what happened to the long-missing painting, Theo finds himself drawn into a criminal underworld to try to extricate himself from his problem.

Tartt's The Secret History is an all-time favorite of mine. She's an assured and extremely talented writer, which is a good thing because this is a wildly ambitious novel. And she mostly pulls it off! There's a LOT going on here, but Tartt keeps her plot moving while she develops Theo, Boris, and Hobie into rich, deep characters. The references to classic literature, Great Expectations and Crime & Punishment particularly, are heady comparisons to invite but they feel earned, Tartt's writing quality really holds up to the canon. I was engrossed in the story she was telling me pretty much the whole time. And it's not a big thing, but as a transplant to Nevada myself (albeit the northern end), I thought she captured the feeling of the desert outskirts of Las Vegas beautifully, especially the ridiculous space of it when compared to a city as tightly compacted as New York. And I loved the way she wrote about Popper!

As good as it is, there are definitely things that don't quite work here. I thought the main female characters (Pippa and Kitsey) were mostly underwritten and sometimes felt contrived. Despite the occasional references to cell phones/modern technology, the book felt old-fashioned in a way that made those references feel shoehorned and anachronistic. It felt like the two "halves" of the book (Theo's childhood and then adulthood) were unbalanced...I thought some of the former could probably have been edited down to let the latter breathe a little more. And while Theo's issues with drugs were written in a way that made them very understandable, I've never found reading about people taking substances all that interesting and the book's continued engagement with it sometimes lost my attention. But all in all, these are fairly minor quibbles. The book is a very very good one, and I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind a bit of a doorstoper! ( )

This is a great book. Read it. Take time over it, don't rush it, if you are rushing, stop and come back to it when you have more time. Do you really have something better to do with your time than reading this? Watching re-runs of Friends, watching the news, the game? It deserves an investment of time, and it will repay you many times over. I can understand people having difficulty with it, it's length, the detailed descriptions of some places, moments, times, and of events that have, on their own, seem insignificant, but which add to the depth of experience this novel brings. It's the same difficulty I have with Dickens and other writers who wrote in a time when people were not so rushed, and when there were fewer distractions calling to us, our phones, computers, emails conspire to prevent us from giving our full attention to books.

This book deserves your full attention, it will repay the effort. I feel as though I know the central cast of characters as well as I know many people, I would recognise them in the street. Isn't this what great books do? They draw us into their world and make us part of it, and sometimes make our world seem dull and lifeless by comparison. This book draws you in, but afterwards makes you look at the world through fresh eyes, eyes that have lived through a new set of experiences with her characters, and learned along with them , and isn't that what Art is?

The effort Tartt has gone to in this book is amazing, every page of this huge book is well written. There is a lot of action as the book spans many years of the protagonists life. A lesser writer would have turned it into three volumes and introduced a vampire but Tartt has an eye on Time. She is aiming for that space on our shelves reserved for the very best who will be read in a hundred years from now. I think she is among the very best writers alive, I wonder if her ambitions will be realised? We should be grateful that she is making the effort and return the compliment with some effort of our own.

Wittgenstein uses the idea of a ladder in one of his books, comparing the book to a ladder, once you have climbed the ladder, you have reached a new place, and you should throw the ladder away then, because you will never need to return to where you were. This book topic me to a new place, but I have no intention of throwing the ladder away. ( )

Really a fantastic book, it’s over 700 pages but it doesn’t seem long. I absolutely didn’t want to put this book down. Fantastic characters and relationships. I loved being transported into New York city. The main character was my favorite, he takes you on a wild adventure. Loved loved loved this book! ( )

It's too hard to talk about what I did or didn't like about this book without giving too much away. There were parts in each category. Overall, it kept me engaged and the writing is good. If art is an interest of yours, and antique furniture, and you don't mind a protagonist with some serious, but realistically developed flaws, you'll like it. ( )