Donna Tartt

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this "extraordinary" and beloved Pulitzer Prize winner from the author of "The Secret History" that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, 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 a 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 a wealthy and insular art community.

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

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.

Storm

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

 wen

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.

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…

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?

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.

Ashna Nirula

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.

beautiful passage and writing is something i am envious of

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.

Nate

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.

None of us find enough kindness in the world.

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

Författaren till de klassiska bästsäljarna Den hemliga historien och Den lille vännen återkommer med en mästerlig och synnerligen efterlängtad roman. En ung pojke i New York City, Theo Decker, överlever mirakulöst en olycka som tar hans mammas liv. Ensam och sviken av sin pappa flyttar han in hos en väns familj, inom sig kämpar han med att finna en mening i sitt nya liv. Under åren som följer blir han uppslukad av en av de få saker som påminner honom om hans mamma: en liten, mystiskt fascinerande målning. En målning som till slut drar in Theo i konstens kriminella baksida. Steglitsan är en oförglömlig odyssé genom dagens Amerika och ett drama med nästan outhärdlig skärpa och intensitet. Det är en berättelse skriven av en mästare om förlust och besatthet, överlevnad och identitet och konstens intensiva dragningskraft. Översättare: Rose-Marie Nielsen, Omslagsformgivare: Nina Ulmaja

Steglistan

Matthew 

Under de där rastlösa, instängda dagarna lärde jag känna varje tum av rummet, som en fånge i sin cell. 

Nova

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.

Eugene

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.

Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino

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.

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.

** 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.

kayla 

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

giulia

"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."

The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

mikki

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.

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.

Katherine Kenny

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

Rose Donovan

Chaitanya Baranwal

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.

anastasia

I’m yet to meet a book that’ll influence me more than this one

Zahra

Barry fucks the grave in Saltburn but I feel nothing because I’m given no reason to and because nothing in the fucking of the grave is potent nor poetic. Nothing Donna includes has the supposed preeminent shock of the grave fucking, but I draw the link because both make me watch a man writhe around for a while because they’re supposed to have painted a picture that frames the grave fucking as something powerful. Theo is so bad at fucking his grave not even a worthwhile still life is drawn from watching him go at it. And he feels proud how long he takes to finish as if my rigor mortis ass was building up to finish with him—the book keeps stuffing extra scenes in as if all I need is for it to be longer to start feeling something. And what shocks me the most is how often these images aren’t even pretty. How often I can’t even look closely and find skilful brush strokes; the number of times the form “bam—something happens” is used fucking floors me. My most honest explanation is Donna wrote a book from the perspective of a bad author. 1 star because I know there are even worse authors out there.

Geese Fish

final monologue was the gates of heaven opening with choirs singing. crazy

probably in the minority of ppl who don’t think theo is a horrible or unlikeable person 

spent more than half on a bender and then realizes the true meaning at the end 💀

amada ♡

Deborah Mabilde

A escrita da Donna é incrível, os personagens são muito bem desenvolvidos e o mundo é construído de forma muito detalhada e emocionante, me deu vontade de ler outros livros dela. 
A história começa muito bem, até a página 300 eu fiquei encantada e estava gostando muito. Mas a partir de algum momento a história se perde, assim como o personagem principal e o plot. A parte de Amsterdam foi a pior, o livro simplesmente se torna uma mistura de drogas, violência sem motivo e confusão mental. Terminei contando as páginas para o fim e detestando quase todos os personagens.

I forgot to update that I finished this but I still don’t like it

esperanza 

To keep it “short”, although Tartt’s writing style is one of my favorites, her books (whether intentionally or not) are very white-catered. Class is a very broad theme in TSH and TGF and her use of prejudiced characters (once again, intentional or not) is a bit weird to me. I let it slide for TSH cause that was the whole point of the story, how class can easily drive someone to murder, or have prejudices due to their elitism, but idk. It seems weird for Donna (if it is the point of her novels) to talk about class and stuff. And I DO love the stories, they’re very interesting, but I just don’t think Donna is the right person TO make these points that are often brought up in her books. I liked the premise (kid “steals” world-famous painting) and the writing, but it all fell flat for me.

i understand why this book won the pulitzer. at page 500 i didn't. the drugs, the anxiety, the depression, the neurotic, the insane, the boring, the droning, the boris, the drinking, the illness...i felt like why the f*ck did i read this? i spent so many hours! sunk cost fallacy! i don't want to keep going. but i wanted the glory of finishing, the satisfaction, i wanted to get here, to write this review. so glad i did! look mom- i made it! 

this book is a superposition. its a celebration of life, but also a burn book of it. its a story of love, but also one of hate. its a story about life's shortness, but also its long-windedness. its a story of objects, but also the immaterial. its grief, but happiness.

i think it does a beautiful job at bringing the voice in our head that says "what's the point of all this?" to the front stage. what would happen if we dangerously let it take control, let it dictate our thoughts, ideas, actions instead of the "Life Is BeautifulTM" crap we've all subscribed to so our lives seem palpable and beautiful. theo is this. a mess of drugs and anxiety and ptsd and hopelessness and obsession and love and dangerous. because of this, it made me feel extremely sad and desolate for a lot of it. 

at the same time though, this story also gave me so much hope in acknowledgement. if theo, who honestly is the worst f*cking character i have ever read about can find the moments of elation, anyone can.

but i think the greatest lesson is in order to do that, to find happiness and joy, you must acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. how we are all floating here for no real reason. purpose is made up. divine intervention is also made up. everything is honestly made up and we choose to believe it. we have to acknowledge this, to actually appreciate the beauty of life instead of just taking it at face value.

in all honesty, i read this book to say i read it. i hated it at points. i was frustrated that i didnt "get it" once again. but now i feel like i do, and as hobie said, it affected me beautifully in a private and personal way it won't for anyone else. the characters were like real people but also the most fantastical people ive ever read about. there were sentences that made no sense and paragraphs that had no meaning. but it connected with me, especially the last chapter that really beautifully tied it all up in the neat bows i love to see from stories. if you've made it this far in my review, you should also read it for yourself to see whether it strikes that chord for you too. i'm warning you, its a long one (hence why i rated it 4.5, it dragged on at points for me). if it doesn't connect with you it doesn't, but if it does, who knows? it might make you live a little bit better.

i understand why this book won the pulitzer. at page 500 i didn't. the drugs, the anxiety, the depression, the neurotic, the insane, the boring, the droning, the boris, the drinking, the illness...i felt like why the f*ck did i read this? i spent so many hours! sunk cost fallacy! i don't want to keep going. but i wanted the glory of finishing, the satisfaction, i wanted to get here, to write this review. so glad i did! look mom- i made it! 

this book is a superposition. its a celebration of life, but also a burn book of it. its a story of love, but also one of hate. its a story about life's shortness, but also its long-windedness. its a story of objects, but also the immaterial. its grief, but happiness.

i think it does a beautiful job at bringing the voice in our head that says "what's the point of all this?" to the front stage. what would happen if we dangerously let it take control, let it dictate our thoughts, ideas, actions instead of the "Life Is BeautifulTM" crap we've all subscribed to so our lives seem palpable and beautiful. theo is this. a mess of drugs and anxiety and ptsd and hopelessness and obsession and love and dangerous. because of this, it made me feel extremely sad and desolate for a lot of it. 

at the same time though, this story also gave me so much hope in acknowledgement. if theo, who honestly is the worst f*cking character i have ever read about can find the moments of elation, anyone can.


but i think the greatest lesson is in order to do that, to find happiness and joy, you must acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. how we are all floating here for no real reason. purpose is made up. divine intervention is also made up. everything is honestly made up and we choose to believe it. we have to acknowledge this, to actually appreciate the beauty of life instead of just taking it at face value.

in all honesty, i read this book to say i read it. i hated it at points. i was frustrated that i didnt "get it" once again. but now i feel like i do, and as hobie said, it affected me beautifully in a private and personal way it won't for anyone else. the characters were like real people but also the most fantastical people ive ever read about. there were sentences that made no sense and paragraphs that had no meaning. but it connected with me, especially the last chapter that really beautifully tied it all up in the neat bows i love to see from stories. if you've made it this far in my review, you should also read it for yourself to see whether it strikes that chord for you too. i'm warning you, its a long one (hence why i rated it 4.5, it dragged on at points for me). if it doesn't connect with you it doesn't, but if it does, who knows? it might make you live a little bit better.

Cassie B

I’m irritated that Tartt seems to underestimate her readers so much, amazed that a nearly 900 page novel can be so lazy. 
Mostly I’m irritated that I made myself finish it.

Friend's recommendation. Good Christmas read. It had it's charm but it didn't feel too special. 

The Goldfinch

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