The Goldfinch Kindle Edition

~This book felt like a fever dream full of emotions & annoyance & a punch in my gut…..an endless long journey overflowing with friendships, love, grief, trauma, regrets & depression & not to forget about smoking, alcohol & drug abuse.~i loved reading the teenage life of Theo & his life in new york & LA but can’t say the same thing about the adult life of Theo.~the most unique & haunting part of this book is Theo’s relationship with his mom…..it was fascinating & i was truly sucked into this book cuz of Theo’s evocative grief & love towards his mom.~i hated adult Theo & his actions…..he was so flawed in an unlikable way. all his doings & thoughts have annoyed me very much throughout the second half of the book & until the very end !!!~ Most of the characters were very unappealing & unsympathetic for example Boris & kitsey & their relationship with theo….specifically kitsey & theo’s relationship was odd & sickening. Boris actions throughout the book left me disturbed & annoyed the heck out of me. i just wanna slap him so effing hard on his face.~Hobie, pippa, andy & andy’s mom were likable characters according to me cuz they were the supportive pillars in theo’s life ever since he lost his mom & all the way until the end of the book in his adult life.~i loved the writing…..it was very good but i also felt like it was a bit of a drag considering it’s a book over 600 pages.~i didn’t like the way author portrayed boris & theo’s relationship……like the whole ending was so unsatisfying cuz boris & theo never bothered to explain things to each other & it was just left like that as if nothing really happened. not gonna lie it was a bit boring in the second half of the book cuz theo annoys you to the point that you wanna give up on this book.~And as far the plot goes with this goldfinch painting is intriguing & the plot twist which i didn’t see coming made it even more interesting & at the end things just happened way too fast in an confusing way which i’d to read twice to comprehend what was going on.

Got this product pre owned for a cheaper price but definitely worth it. Cost 250 in perfect condition.

Well written and narrated novel with good characters, plot twists and analogies. The Kindle edition is good and easy to read.

I'm writing this review fresh off reading the book. This is a 771 page epic and has taken me about 9 days to read. There aren't that many characters in this book. Tartt succeeded in getting me emotionally invested with these characters and made me care about what happened to them or which way they ended up. I consider this a triumph on the author's part and it is ample evidence of her mastery over her craft. I often got the feeling while reading this book, that Tartt was striving to emulate Dickens' Copperfield and/or Twist because of the sprawling nature and some very memorable characters. Also, like Copperfield and Twist, this novel's protagonist - Theo Decker is also an orphan. Theo's very shady Ukrainian best friend Boris often reminded me of Dickens' Artful Dodger. The relationship dynamic between Theo and Pippa often reminded me of David and Agnes from Copperfield. Don’t be fooled by the superlative blurbs (like, “Thrilling”, “Exciting”, “A Page-turner”) appearing on the covers of the recent editions of the book. Make no mistake; this is as much a meditation on life, love, loss, friendship and the human condition as it is a so-called thriller.This gargantuan effort fetched Donna Tartt the Nobel Prize. I have no idea how this novel is going to be judged in 10, 20 years time or whether it will justify the Nobel committee's decision and confidence in this work. Some feted and decorated books quickly fall off the map whereas books that are ignored by critics go on to gain stellar reputations with the passage of time and tend to age a lot better than a lot of their contemporaries. As with everything else, only time will tell.Now a little about the actual physical book itself. I bought this edition for rupees 239 way back in October when Amazon had it on sale. A very good deal for a brand new book which was in reasonably good condition when it arrived at my doorstep. Alas, the storage, packaging and handling for books leaves a lot to be desired. The typeface is nice and crisp on this Little Brown edition and the ISBN number for the book I own is 9781408704950.

This is an epic novel in every sense of the word. I cannot remember the last time that I could not put a book down, even returning to it in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping. It is one of those books that drew me in right from the start and I just had to find out what happened to Theo and those around him, even when he sunk to the depths with seemingly no prospect of rising again. The painting, that painting, the events surrounding it and its place in Theo's life are traced effectively throughout the book, almost to the point of just when I had forgotten about it because of other events, Donna Tartt brings it back to the forefront of the narrative. This is not a 'literary' review, it is a genuine response to this novel from a keen and avid reader who first picked up a book to read for pleasure over 50 years or so ago and I am delighted to say that I am still being moved and challenged by the imagination of others and, in the case of The Goldfinch, I am now left wondering what I can possibly read next to take the memory of this rich seam of characters out of my head. What Donna Tartt does so well is to juggle the cast so effectively - some of who we meet only fleetingly, but they all seem to make an impression and are there to drive the narrative forward - that they pivot around the central presence of Theo to provide a highly satisfactory narrative that was, for me, totally engaging. It was hard to read at times, not because of the writing, but because of the unfolding events, but, ultimately, it moved me, angered me, delighted me, made me smile, made me cry and just made me want to be a better human being - be a Hobie, in fact.

My introduction to Donna Tartt was A Secret History - a beautifully crafted novel of friendship and secrets which I devoured in mere hours. I then bought The Little Friend - still haven't finished it. It was as slow and dull as the town it's set in. Maybe that was the point, it's certainly "atmospheric". The Goldfinch falls between the two. Brilliant premise, and the start of the book is gripping. But there were times I couldn't wait to get to the end of the chapter so I could put the book down and take a break from it in the hope that when I started the next chapter the story might pick up again. It's rare I don't finish a book but much of the time I ploughed on through this just to get the pages out of the way rather than reading for pleasure. The main character is flawed and damaged and selfish but that's understandable given his childhood experiences - great characters are always shades of light and dark. And Theo is a great character. Perhaps the issue is that many of the others in comparison are just caricatures - charismatic Eastern European on the wrong side of the law, damaged and vulnerable unattainable love interest, distant disinterested grasping dad. The final rambling chapter that beats you over the head with the books life lessons (just in case you were too dumb to get the message from the story) was pretty patronising. If you like a novel crafted with skill, that has brilliantly drawn characters, is written using words with more than two syllables and drags you into its pages until its final shocking denouement, try We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver instead.

This book lost me at the point a character pushed a button in the lift and, "The gears caught and shuddered; one by one, the pearly old deco numbers blinked past as I creaked up to the seventh floor."To paraphrase Kingsley Amis on his son's writing style, there need to be more sentences like, "They finished their drinks and left the room." In this case, "I took the lift to the seventh floor" would (more than) suffice. This overly writerly prose is just too much for me, and it felt as if the book were being padded for length. So I finish my drink and leave the room.

Brilliantly written book about Theo, who at 13 is forced through tragic circumstances to go and live with the Barbour family in New York.A modern story which starts minutely detailed and vividly seen by the author, so we see it too, the nuances of the Barbour family life, parents and four children, of whom Andy is Theo’s friend, a “white mouse” with a “wan, irritating voice” who has a hilarious line of repartee with his father who is eternally trying to interest his indifferent children in sailing.Other stand-out characters are Hobie who befriends Theo, and Boris, Theo’s wild, unpredictable friend who runs wild with him in Las Vegas. A few sentences and we have them, a real person, fixed, Mr Silver the debt collector, the doormen.If only the book had been a quarter or even a third shorter. After the words “eight years later” things change, as if the author is tired of her creations and gallops through the rest, impossibly convoluted and contrived plot and all the Dickensian/J K Rowling characters we have come to love becoming caricatures, less true and solid. Pippa, always vague, slips away completely, and even Boris’s English, so funny to start with, become cartoon-like.There are themes and metaphors bursting out all over, meandering, fathers and sons, abandonment, the pointlessness or otherwise of life struggles etc etc, and of course acres about ART and the meaning of the painting of the goldfinch, which is, after all, a painting of a bird chained up.

I’ve just finished reading this and feel that I deserve a little round of applause. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, or appreciate the beautiful skilled writing, or didn’t find it a page turner at times, but it was very long and wordy. I seemed to read and read and get nowhere! The main character Theo is also the narrator and he describes in stunning detail every thought, deed, meal, weather condition etc. it did make me feel as if I was in the book with him, and this story will definitely stay with me. I didn’t find the characters unlikable - I found them flawed from their traumatic lives, and doing all they could to get by in life. I found the story fascinating, and it helped that the painting was real, and I could go on line and look at it. However, some of the dealings in it were very mixed up and complicated and hard to follow. I also found the ending didn’t really sit with the rest of the story, and seemed a bit implausible. All in all, I would recommend it if you like a good ‘slog’ of a book. I’ve never read Donna Tartt but I may now try more.