There are a lot of great things about Donna Tartt’s The
Goldfinch. It is rich, with some beautiful prose and, lush in detail and filled
with Dicken’s like characters and situations (the hero is Theodore Decker, who
will remind both popular fiction reader and classical ones of Oliver). But it
also overlong and almost falls completely apart by the end.
The Goldfinch begins with Theo in Amsterdam on Christmas Day.
He is in a panic, sweaty with fever and full of narcotics, trapped here because
his passport is in the hands of his long-time Russian friend Boris, who is
hiding from the police after a terrible incident that left two people dead. His
only solace is a brief dream visit from his beloved mother, who died 14 years
ago, when he was an eighth-grader.
The story –framed with this grief- returns to that day when
there was a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
where then 13-year-old Theo’s mother has just explained to him the title
painting’s art-historical import (Fabritius was Rembrandt’s student and
Vermeer’s teacher). He also comes into contact with an older gentleman who is
showing a red-headed girl around the same area. The bomb goes off, mother dies,
and Theo steals the priceless painting accidentally on purpose. Before his
retreat from the remains of the museum, the older gentleman gives Theo a ring
and tells him where to go to return it, and then dies as well.
Placed into the rich family of schoolmate (until someone can
find a living relative), Theo feels lost and conflicted, shattered with survivors
guilt. The stealing of the painting was –upon reflection- a chance to keep the
last minutes of his mother’s life alive. The returning of the ring also brings
him in contact with an older gentle –the working partner to the man who died at
the museum- named James “Hobie” Hobart.
But just when things become less awkward at Andy’s house,
Theo’s deadbeat Dad (and equally clueless girlfriend Xandra) arrives in New York
and quickly bounds him up and transplants him to the outer rings of Las Vegas,
in a housing development that is more a ghost town.
There, a very unsupervised –yet smart and witty –Theo meets
Boris, a Russian teen who has bounced all over the world with his violent Dad
(this book abounds with bad Dads). The two become nearly inseparable and spend
a lot of time hanging around, drinking, watching classic movies on cable, doing
drugs and not going to school. And always, in the background, the hidden
Goldfinch painting is anchoring Theo to his dead mother. He realizes the longer
he has it, the more dangerous it will be to him, but he is chained to it.
Eventually –and only half way through the book –Theo’s
season in Hell of Las Vegas ends and he returns to New York (by sheer miracle
and coincidences that only happens in these books) where the rest of the book
goes on. Here, Theo returns to the “old curiosity shop” that Hobie toils in and
runs the business. But Theo is not a saint by any means, and while saving the business,
he does it in the most questionable way that leads him a reunion with Boris, the
Russian Mob, his unrequited love of the red-headed girl (Pippa) and final
dealings The Goldfinch painting itself.
I loved the book, and was well aware of the critical praise
it was getting since its release last October. It was also on my long list of
books I wanted to read, long before it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in February.
But despite it being smartly written, filled with lovable and despicable characters
galore, despite a writer of popular fiction winning a literary award, the book
does go on about a 100 pages too long. But I still highly recommend the book
because it is a rarity when an author such as Tartt (this book being only the
third one she’s published) receives such universal accolades and fiction’s
highest honor.
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