The Goldfinch
Complex
Meaningful
Long winded

The Goldfinch A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Donna Tartt2015
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE "The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
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Reviews

Photo of Jovana Gjekanovikj
Jovana Gjekanovikj @jovana
2.5 stars
Mar 2, 2025

Not great, the plot was a total miss at points. I was also not a fan of the ending. The characters and the descriptions were very well written, in Donna's style.

Photo of Cherine Fok
Cherine Fok@dhcherine
4 stars
Jan 4, 2025

Subliminal, as with Tartt's other works.

While some have found The Goldfinch to be painfully detailed, I liked that Tartt took her time with how she fleshed out the details. She nailed PTSD and survivor's guilt, and I felt like I made a friend in Theo.

I loved Hobbie and Popchik and how all these characters were parallels for finding a home in the most unexpected of places.

While Theo was not exactly the most likeable of characters, he did however went through a traumatic time and he was merely trying to survive after and in ways that he knew how to. Completely understandable. Wish people would stop hating on Theo (and the book by extension).

+4
Photo of Ananya Jain
Ananya Jain@ananyaj8
3.5 stars
Dec 26, 2024

Love Donna tart and love some crime but sooooo long omds

Photo of Silje Løvli Lorentsen
Silje Løvli Lorentsen@villblomster
3 stars
Oct 2, 2024

Entirely too long-winded for my taste, I hate to admit I had to skim through the second half to finish it at all, as it'd been years since I started it and it just went on and on. It was a good story and good writing, just too many words for me about too many things.

+12
Photo of Mia Hamilton
Mia Hamilton@miahamilton
3 stars
Sep 29, 2024

donna you disappoint me yet again

Photo of Naveen Sheik
Naveen Sheik@navsheik
5 stars
Sep 17, 2024

Probably one of the best books I’ve read. Thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

Photo of surtified™
surtified™@heartrender081
3 stars
Aug 18, 2024

The first 450 pages of theo's childhood was amazing. I loved those first 450 pages honestly. They were an absolute masterpiece, what with his mother's death, his loss of home, continously moving around and more. His friendship (or more than that?) was the most strongest friendship i've ever read about. Potentially, these 3 stars are given purely for their childhood friendship. I love it. And then we extended 8 years after his childhood and it was horrible. This book is far too long, far too much goes on, the "romance" between certain characters isn't even real, the events which continue make no sense. The last 50 pages I was just clawing for it to end, skim reading basically all of it. This book was not the greatest book, and my feedback is if you want to write a book, don't make it lengthy, because you find the randomest of events occuring, that don't make sense, and don't follow. Also, try to remind us of who the characters are every now and then, considering this book is like half the size of the bible or something.

Photo of Lili
Lili@lilibs
4.5 stars
Aug 15, 2024

Again, beautifully written, but I disliked Theo more and more throughout the book.. Hoby and Boris I loved though

+3
Photo of Ada
Ada@adasel
2 stars
Jul 16, 2024

I really liked parts of the book but mostly hated a lot of it. I couldn't finish the book as it was dragging on and on and I didn't find the enthusiasm I needed to finish a 700 paged book. The author kept putting unnecessary details that I didn't really care about. I also couldn't build a connection with most of the characters and didn't really care for them.

Photo of Abbie Duggan
Abbie Duggan@abbieduggan
5 stars
Jul 1, 2024

“Why not something more typical? Why not a seascape, a landscape, a history painting, a commissioned portrait of some important person, a low-life scene of drinkers in a tavern, a bunch of tulips for heaven’s sake, rather than this lonely little captive? Chained to his perch?” To keep it simple: this is the best book I’ve ever read.

Photo of tori 👻
tori 👻@persefonitas
5 stars
Jun 15, 2024

Donna Tartt does it again. I'm in love with her writing ever since The Secret History last year. The way she narrates her tales gives you the knowledge of how much this woman loves what she does. Every line of every page is beautifully put together. Boris was fascinating to read about as was the love of one for an object, and how much it can shape them as a person. I feel like we all have a Goldfinch, perhaps not in the intensity and desperation Theo has, but I like to think we all do. This novel was beyond beautiful, the last few pages were hard to read for how much it made me feel.

Photo of Eli Alvah Huckabee
Eli Alvah Huckabee@elijah
4 stars
Jun 1, 2024

I was engrossed! Tartt writes such a compelling narrator and who is also the saddest man alive? and she does this thing where she adds a ton of question marks? to the end of half-statements? and doesn’t capitalize them? because they’re spoken by young assholes? It’s really cool. And the word choice is top notch, I learned what a margrave is and what to call a brocade and how to make a cavil statement. Really impressive for a book I got for 2 bucks!

Photo of Elisavet Rozaki
Elisavet Rozaki @elisav3t
5 stars
May 20, 2024

Incredible, all the way until its last paragraph.

Photo of Nova
Nova@clandestine
4 stars
Apr 28, 2024

this was a beautiful read and the only thing stopping me from giving it 5 stars is the word choices. also i probably wont reread, this is more like something you read when you have a lot of time, when you’re unwinding. the paragraphs tend to get very long and tedious to read. i got attached to the characters and andy broke my heart.

Photo of Eugene
Eugene@jujinjujeen
4 stars
Apr 2, 2024

I loved the journey, some moments caught me, but to be honest I expected more. The art pieces described with great love and care for their beauty, the adventure was interesting, but I expected to get more out of the characters. Sometimes they seem flat, though charismatic.

Photo of Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino
Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino@rodrigueseve
1 star
Mar 30, 2024

This was the first book I’ve DNFd since I got back into reading. Was super excited for this but found it profoundly dull and way too slow for me. This book could be told in 300 pages but we’re stuck with a 800 page novel where most things are boring descriptions and just honestly fluff. I’m honestly proud of myself for withstanding 500 pages of this bullshit, but I can’t no more. This book is the bane of my existance. So I’m gonna just read what happens somewhere and watch the movie maybe. Just wish I’d come to this conclusion earlier. The bane of my existance. I also keep editing this review cuz every time I remember of something to say. Like the story of this has really interesting parts and could be really good but like by the time we get to the point I already don’t care cuz we got like 100 pages of fluff and setup.

Photo of Joe
Joe@joe2267
5 stars
Mar 17, 2024

One of the best books I've read in my life. The story is a never-ending adventure, with many pages leaving me shocked. I've recommended it to so many.

Photo of e
e@erxx
3 stars
Mar 14, 2024

** spoiler alert ** an overall interesting book and certainly one i enjoyed reading although i didn't find it to be on the same level as the secret history. I often found the book to be rather cliché, the characters not very well written and noticeably one-dimensional. the beginning is gorgeous and captivating but the book really starts to go downhill once Theo moves to Vegas with his father. i would've liked it more if Theo's time in Vegas would've been cut a little shorter and his time in Amsterdam, towards the end of the book, expanded.

Photo of kayla
kayla @kayellng
4 stars
Mar 14, 2024

3.75-4ish....i loved most parts but some just dragged on and felt unnecessary

Photo of giulia
giulia@eulyrical
5 stars
Mar 1, 2024

"It exists; and it keeps on existing. 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 wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next."

Photo of mikki
mikki@feralfear
3 stars
Feb 27, 2024

Gorgeous, gorgeous girls read The Goldfinch and have a love-hate relationship with it. That's me. I loved it, but only because of Boris Pavlikovsky. Theo was so insufferable for me and through every decision he made I found him more and more unlikable. I gave it 3 stars (3.5, actually) just to appreciate Donna's prose (very wordy, but I loved it nonetheless). I'll rewrite this review sometime in the future, but for now this'll do.

Photo of Katherine Kenny
Katherine Kenny@kathk9
5 stars
Feb 26, 2024

Gorgeous book with unforgettable characters and writing, 900+ pages flew by - I didn’t care for the Secret History and suspected this may be the same but it is in a whole other league better.

+8
Photo of Rose Donovan
Rose Donovan@rosedonovan
3.5 stars
Feb 19, 2024

The secret history was way better this was very very slow, waste of time but I loved the characters and got attached so I had to finish it

+4
Photo of Chaitanya Baranwal
Chaitanya Baranwal@chaitanyabaranwal
4 stars
Feb 10, 2024

Until this book, I placed story and writing of a book on the same pedestal - at times, I'd not finish a book with superb writing but a story not riveting enough. And while this book's story can't be called "not riveting enough", the way this book is written, for me, stands way above its storyline. The vivid imagery and emotions the writing invokes, the way the starting few pages connect effortlessly 700 pages later, and how I connected with Theo - feeling truly elated at his few moments of happiness and being critical when I thought his life was taking a turn for the worse. By the end, I felt like I now know Theo as a person, know his life better any character in the book could have (which I guess was the point, this book being a Bildungsroman). While the novel turned a little monotonous in the middle, and some things in its optimistic-nihilistic ending went over my head, it ended inducing a strong sense of surrealism in me - abstract emotions I really cannot put into words. Just like there's an interplay between brush strokes and emotions in art (something which I learned from the book), there was also a strong relation between words I read and the unspeakable feelings it induced in me, which is what makes this novel really special.

Highlights

Photo of Junaid Anjum
Junaid Anjum@junaidanjum

What would I remember of it now? Little or nothing. But of course the texture of that morning is clearer than the present, down to the drenched, wet feel of the air.

Page 9

Beautifully written.

Photo of aywen
aywen@aywen

That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. 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 wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. 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 wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

Page 864
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

“…Goodness written all over him and yet always that twitch of worry and disquiet. That subtle shade of the betrayer.”

Page 638
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

Page 535
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

Most people seemed satished with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget It: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom.

Page 535
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavour from the dawn of time The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death… And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game.

Page 534
Photo of margo
margo@margo

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky—so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

Photo of margo
margo@margo

It’s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn’t understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.

A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.

Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

She was the golden thread running through everything, a lens that magnified beauty so that the whole world stood transfigured in relation to her, and her alone.

Page 520
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

For years she had been the first thing I remembered when I woke up, the last thing that drifted through my mind as I went to sleep, and during the day she came to me obtrusively, obsessively, always with a painful shock…

Page 518
Photo of  wen
wen@wennie

And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time — so too has love.

Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

Yet even in death my dad was ineradicable, no matter how hard I tried to wish him out of the picture — for there he always was, in my hands and my voice and my walk, in my darting sideways glance…

Page 449
This highlight contains a spoiler
Photo of  wen
wen@wennie

Andy had chosen Japanese as his second language precisely because he had such a thing for fanservice miko and slutty manga girls in sailor uniforn. Japanese from Japan?

i also love (yae) miko

Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

But inwardly I was almost drunk at the lift in his mood-the same flood of elation I'd felt as a small child when the silences broke, when his footsteps grew light again and you heard him laughing at something, humming at the shaving mirror.

Page 358
Photo of Ashna Nirula
Ashna Nirula@ashnanirula

Across those unbridgeable distances — between bird and painter, painting and viewer —I hear only too well what's being said to me, a psst from an alleyway as Hobie put it, across four hundred years of time, and it's really very personal and specific. It's there in the light-rinsed atmosphere, the brush strokes he permits us to see, up close, for exactly what they are —hand worked flashes of pigment, the very passage of the bristles visible —and then, at a distance, the miracle, or the joke as Horst called it, although really it's both, the slide of transubstantiation where paint is paint and yet also feather and bone. It's the place where reality strikes the ideal, where a joke becomes serious and anything serious is a joke. The magic point where every idea and its opposite are equally true.

another gorgeous passage

This highlight contains a spoiler
Photo of Ashna Nirula
Ashna Nirula@ashnanirula

To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole; but ever since the painting had vanished from under me I'd felt drowned and extinguished by vastness — not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm's reach of each other, and with a swell of vertigo I thought of all the places I'd been and all the places I hadn't, a world lost and vast and unknowable, dingy maze of cities and alleyways, far-drifting ash and hostile immensi-ties, connections missed, things lost and never found, and my painting swept away on that powerful current and drifting out there somewhere: a tiny fragment of spirit, faint spark bobbing on a dark sea.

beautiful passage and writing is something i am envious of

This highlight contains a spoiler
Photo of Ashna Nirula
Ashna Nirula@ashnanirula

Not every apartment we saw had been vacated for reasons of tragedy, as I somehow believed. The fact that I smelled divorce, bankruptcy, illness and death in almost every space we viewed was clearly delusional - and, besides, how could the troubles of these previous tenants, real or imagined, harm Kitsey or me?

a thought that originated from theo's childhood. childhood bleeds into adulthood.

This highlight contains a spoiler
Photo of Ashna Nirula
Ashna Nirula@ashnanirula

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept f*cking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game.

nihlistic and depressing man

This highlight contains a spoiler
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

Back at the Barbours', amidst the clamor and plenitude of a family that wasn't mine, I now felt even more alone than usual…

Page 177
Photo of Storm
Storm@stormtaleese

Cinnamon-colored walls, rain on the windowpanes, vast quiet and a sense of depth and distance, like the varnish over the background of a nineteenth-century painting.

Page 165
Photo of Nate
Nate@wiredfractal

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.

Page 707
Photo of Nate
Nate@wiredfractal

None of us find enough kindness in the world.

Photo of Nate
Nate@wiredfractal

The world won’t come to me,’ he used to say, ‘so I must go to it.

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