Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch – Review

 

It was the early 90's while working at a major daily newspaper selling ad space to Melbourne's entertainment industry, that Donna Tartt's A Secret History, landed on bookstore shelves across the country. A photographer friend turned me on to the novel, singing its praises. I immediately purchased the book and began reading it on the 6:30 train home to Hawthorne, a few blocks from the university. Sleep was impossible that night, and managed to finish the book by sunrise. I remember loving the book so much that a few months later, I emailed her publisher to find out if another novel was in the pipeline. A week later, the response was that Ms. Tartt spends years on her projects, and they didn't expect another novel for at least a decade. To be certain, I was disappointed.

Flash forward 30 some years and The Goldfinch came on the scene. My Little Friend had been released in 2002, and for a variety of reasons never got around to reading it. That said, both novels sat on my bookshelf peering at me untouched for years. A few weeks ago, I came across an interview of Ms. Tartt in some Dutch country about The Goldfinch. Listening to her read a page of the novel, instantly walked to my shelf and cracked its covers. And what a tale it is.

One can term the The Goldfinch as an American epic. Spanning 30 years, a 13 year old Manhattan kid, Theo Drecker, living with his single mother attend an art show in the city when tragedy strikes: bombs explode in the museum killing dozens of patrons including Theo's beautiful mother. In the aftermath: smoke, dust, concrete debris and the cries of the wounded, Theo helps an old man by sitting with him until he dies. They have a connection, a fateful connection, where the old man gives the boy his expensive ring, and turns his attention to a unassuming painting: The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius (1654). In a fit of unconscious desperation, young Theo grabs the painting, placing it under his coat, and manages to escape the crumbling museum. Of course the boy's loss is devastating and a pain he never really loses.

The painting is at the center of this story that reflects all aspects of existence: pain, loss, slavery, freedom, friendship, love and the dregs of capitalism. It is also that enduring connection for Theo and his mother.

Tartt is a master of characterization. All the players in the tale have a certain depth and sympathetic attributes that, for me at least, created a bond between the character and the reader. I would have to say that Boris, a Ukrainian son of an oil engineer, who Theo meets in Las Vegas, is the most complicated and who's zest for living and philosophy of life is admirable: at bottom a con, a criminal with a heart of gold and the loyalty of a German Shepherd, one cannot help comparing him to some Dickens character. Then of course there is Hobie, the furniture restorer who was the partner of the dead old man in the museum. The relationship between Theo and Hobie is something to be envied – a beautiful soul.

Tartt's narrative style is elegant, descriptive and her storytelling compelling. I would actually propose her to be the new modern master of literary prose.

Reading The Goldfinch was a experience, a experience that I will no doubt return to in years to come.