Theo is a thirteen year old boy who suddenly finds himself without a parent or guardian after his single mom is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during the chaos of which he steals his mother's favorite piece of art, a painting called "The Goldfinch." He moves in with a wealthy friend's family in their Park Avenue apartment. He makes friends with a guy named Hobie and a girl named Pippa.

His life is upended when his deadbeat dad comes back into the picture and takes Theo to live with him in Las Vegas. He makes friends with a boy named Boris there. After his father is killed, he runs away back to New York and reunites with Hobie.

Years later, Theo and Hobie are partners in Hobie's antiques business. He saves the business from bankruptcy by selling fake antiques. Boris reappears in his life, admits he stole "The Goldfinch" from Theo years ago, and promises to help him recover it. The recovery ends up in the painting being returned to the museum and Boris collecting a huge reward, which he splits with Theo.

Theo uses his share of the reward money to travel the country, and learns that his feelings for Pippa really have been reciprocated all this time, but Pippa worries that their same flaws (trauma from the bombing and the resulting addiction issues) leave them destined for ruin. The book ends with Theo's inner contemplation of his experiences and flaws.

People who like literary fiction, and sprawling coming of age stories. It's a long book, and very leisurely paced, so it's more for people who enjoy luxuriating in elegant prose more than they enjoy a fast-paced page-turner.

The book was exceptionally well written. The author definitely has a way with words, and as someone who doesn't typically enjoy literary fiction, even I could appreciate how eloquent the language in the book was.

The book felt slow and bloated at times. It's over 700 pages long, and definitely felt like it could have been pared down a little. I like stories that move quickly rather than spend a lot of time on overly-descriptive sensory details.

I wanted to read a thriller, to be honest. I can appreciate a good turn of phrase and elegant description every now and then, but I mostly gravitate toward plot-driven stories. I appreciated this book, but it made me want to go back to the stuff I really like.

Bad about my own writing abilities, LOL. The author has such a mastery of narrative description, it's really impressive and inspiring how well she presents the language in the book.

Is incredibly talented. I will definitely keep an eye on what else she's written and check it out. Not necessarily right away, but I'll keep it on my radar for the next time I'm feeling like a literary fiction novel where I just want to appreciate elegant sentence construction.

It's incredibly well written and vibrantly described.

It's very long and not a lot happens narratively, so if you're expecting a book that moves quickly or has a lot of plot in it.

As far as coming of age books go, this is a pretty good one. It's not necessarily my preferred genre, but in a genre where the books I have read tend to be more on the juvenile side, I really appreciated the fact that this was a complicated, adult look at the situation. It's definitely worth a read, if only to study the quality of the language.

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Created Sep 30, 2021 at 11:56pm • Submit your own review...