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“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt

It took some time, but I finally finished all 771 pages of “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, very likely the longest novel on this year’s Notable Books list. This book has received plenty of attention. I felt like I was arriving a little late to the ball.

It’s the story of Theo, whose mother dies in a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when Theo is 13. In fact, he was with her that day. In the ensuing chaos he ends up in possession of a priceless Dutch painting, “The Goldfinch.” The course of Theo’s life once his mother is gone includes his stay with a rich classmate’s family, a drug-colored exile in Las Vegas where he meets his best-friend-for-life, Boris, and a return to New York where Theo goes into business with one of the warmest-hearted men in America. The novel ends where it begins, Theo in Amsterdam with blood on his hands.

 I found myself surprising intrigued by all of this. One reviewer called the book “Dickensian,” and that helped me put the unlikely and usually crazy characters, not to mention the unlikely plot, in perspective. I liked how people seemed to come and go. Another reviewer referred to the books’ “bewitching urgency.” I found myself liking Theo despite his passivity and alarming tendency to make poor choices over and over and over. I enjoyed the long riffs on art history and furniture restoration. I didn’t take the whole thing seriously, but read it more like an educated romp.

 Some of my friends found it lacking. Few books could live up to the hype of “The Goldfinch.” There seems to be general agreement that Tartt would have improved the novel had she edited out a hundred or so pages. Sometimes key information seemed to missing even in a section filled with dense detail.

 Looking back on it, I see that even though I read it from a shallow place, I was touched by Theo’s descriptions of his grief and loneliness, by the painting’s impact on his sense of himself, by my ragged hope that his friend Hobie really was as warm-hearted as he seemed. I made myself slow down for Tartt’s final-chapter reflections on the impact a piece of art can have, and found them true to my own experience.

 In the end, I recommend it. Not as the Great American Novel, but as a one-of-a-kind work that pulls together a remarkable collection of personalities, topics, and places. I salute Tartt for her writer’s mind that chose it all, then wove it all into place.

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