Where do you start when you are reviewing a book that is truly great. I did not say it was perfect, but this book that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, definitely stands up as a great story in my opinion.

The best thing about this book of 771 pages is the characters. If you enjoy reading about complex characters with good hearts then this book is for you.

It is also about characters who reach out to help others (James "Hobie" Hobart) out of the goodness in their hearts with no ulterior motive.

Our story's "hero" and the first person narrator is a character named Theo Decker. We start looking back at age 12 when Theo and his mother are caught in a terrorist attack on an art museum in New York. Theo survives, but his life is not easy. His dad disappeared shortly before his mom died.

He goes to live with a family of a friend on Park Avenue and eventually is reunited with his father, who takes him to a decadent, unsupervised, drug laced life in Vegas, where his only real friends are a dog named Popper and a whacked out Russian that he calls Boris.

I am not about to give it away in this review, but during the explosion's aftermath in the art gallery, he "saves" and retrieves a painting called, "The Goldfinch", which he cares for and cherishes for a long, long time. In fact, Theo cares for the painting in a way the reader wishes Theo himself might be cared for all along in a better world.

The book explores Theo's struggles with growing up without real parents, but in the end, perhaps the best parent one could have imagined, in Hobie. Real, genuine souls do not have to be biological parents to be memorable ones.

anyone who enjoys a good story, with memorable characters.

James Hobart. He and Boris and Theo are amazing characters.

I like how the story unwinds with regard to the painting, which is at the heart of the story.

the way the ending doesn't tell me anything about what happens eventually to Theo. I wanted a happy ending there and I didn't get it.

it was 771 pages and I do not regret a moment I spent reading it this summer.

I went into this thinking, "Show me what a Pulitzer Prize book looks like these days." Now I know and it is a great and compelling story.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) (National Book Critics Circle Award: Fiction Finalists)   from Amazon.Com!

Created Aug 14, 2014 at 10:53am • Submit your own review...