Book Review: The Goldfinch

4 minutes

Author: Donna Tartt

Having just finished this nearly 900 page novel, I’m speechless. It’s just so beautiful – the last few pages especially. There is a certain – maturity of thought in the whole thing that I’ve rarely encountered in fiction so far.

This is a tale that spans 15 years, but in truth – 400. Theo’s love for his mother was carried through Fabritius’s tiny but striking painting of the goldfinch. It was his anchor throughout his journey of loss, constant change, the madness and the recklessness with which he lived from his adolescence.

At this point I would like to say that Boris reminds me very much of one of my own friends. The fearlessness, borderline unhinged, making me laugh with her outrageous but new outlook on life and inspiring me to live life for its excitement, for all the unknowns lurking in the shadows and alleyways and making me want to be bolder and not care about what others think – it made me smile so much – oh, and she’s the one who recommended this book to me.

It was also fascinating to observe how people’s souls stayed the same as they grew – Theo’s melancholy and yet striking intelligence, Boris’s optimism, Pippa’s otherworldly beauty as a person, Kitsey’s lightness, Hobie with his always kind and passionate soul and Mrs. Barbour’s stern but motherly presence.

Whatever happened, whether Theo lived with his dad and Xandra, whether he was alone and afraid, whether he was wholly happy with Pippa or Hobie or in his shop, the painting always was there – a constant presence in his life. It was his window to his mother, his window to what Fabritius could be trying to say about resilience or beauty or being chained and his window back to Boris and ultimately to freedom and self exploration.

I really enjoyed the slow pace – I could immerse myself in Donna Tartt’s world, step by step, like getting into a pool for the first time. The characters really grew on me. And I am SO glad about how intelligent Theo is – what a refreshing protagonist. He was truly shaped by his circumstances, I can see that so well.

The ending part about beauty was so beautiful and well written by itself. How beauty and art and love exist in the middle ground between reality and illusion or between reality and when the mind strikes it.

Overall – a fantastic read that I really enjoyed. It may not be for everyone given the length and instances of some explicit language. But if you can see it for what it is – like Fabritius’s Goldfinch – the little bird that might at first glance look wholly unremarkable – until you notice the chain – carrying with it a history of rich meaning and possible messages – it’ll touch your heart.

My favourite quotes:

We have art in order not to die from the truth. – Nietzsche

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons. – Schiller

“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.”

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”

“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.”

Image courtesy: Carel Fabritius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons