Saturday, March 29, 2014

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt
2013, Amazon Kindle e-book
no isbn
unnumbered

A young boy and his mother are inside a New York art museum when a bomb goes off.  In the ensuing chaos the boys accidentally steals a painting called 'The Goldfinch'.  His fear of getting into trouble precludes him from going to the authorities, and this fear remains as he grows up.

 It is not often that I read a book I know nothing about (from a plot point of view), but this is one of them.  I really enjoy discovering everything as I'm reading.  As a fan of the author's other work (namely Secret History), I thought I'd give this novel a go.  Tartt is really good at getting 'voice' right.  There are a few voices in this book as the narrator Theodore grows up and changes, and she nailed all of them.  I felt let down by the overly-philosophical ending, I thought the author had done a good enough job of getting her point across through narrative without having to resort to holding the reader's hand at the end.