The Goldfinch in Bookmarks Subscribers

Jul 17, 2015 Karen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: very-best-of-2015

When this book first came out I decided I wasn't going to get sucked into all the hype and run out and buy this. I really didn't care for The Secret History thought I would be wasting my time. Then it won the Pulitzer Prize and I decided I would pick it up when it came out in paperback, thinking why not since I've always liked the Prize winners. I'm so glad that I did. This book was incredible!! I could have kept reading for the pure enjoyment of the sentences. This is a masterpiece! I highly en ...more

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Apr 04, 2015 Merry rated it really liked it

I finished this book 3 days ago, but I am just now commenting because... it's taken that long to contemplate what I just read? The book is long winded, too much information, very descriptive up until the end, then the author pours out her heart and tells you everything, the reason for each characters actions, flaws, expressing their deep emotional feelings, and healing. She questions good and bad, how life is short, and so much more. Although her book from the very beginning was lengthy in size I finished this book 3 days ago, but I am just now commenting because... it's taken that long to contemplate what I just read? The book is long winded, too much information, very descriptive up until the end, then the author pours out her heart and tells you everything, the reason for each characters actions, flaws, expressing their deep emotional feelings, and healing. She questions good and bad, how life is short, and so much more. Although her book from the very beginning was lengthy in size as well as sentence structure, yes some sentences went on for days, just as mine are in this review as I feel she has given me permission to write long wordy sentences...but only if I could write them like her. She has a gift, a gift of writing every detail and every thought...she misses nothing...she is very talented, I did not use any of my own imagination to determine how the characters felt, as this author supplied every thought, every emotion. Again, I became weary with so much information, and I wondered as I turned the 700 plus pages, where this would all end. This book is about possession, of things, beautiful things and how and why we possess them. It is also about people, the imperfect, and the search for answers to life and death. Among sadness and grief, joy can be found. Profound thoughts.

pg 511 My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong—but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled.

pg 695 For humans— trapped in biology— there was no mercy: we lived a while, we fussed around for a bit and died,we rotted in the ground like garbage. Time destroyed us all soon enough. But to destroy, or lose, a deathless thing— to break bonds stronger than the temporal— was a metaphysical uncoupling all its own, a startling new flavor of despair.

pg. 768 ...but does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end— and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it’s possible to play it with a kind of joy?

pg 771 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. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

Tartt, Donna (2013-10-22). The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

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Mar 27, 2015 Suzanne Manners rated it really liked it

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winners

Theo survives an explosion in a NY Art Gallery, and smuggles out a masterpiece .. a tiny picture of a goldfinch. His involvement in hiding this art led him to meet other interesting characters who had an impact in his life through the years. I really liked Boris, Theo's friend. The reasoning he uses to explain his actions, all based on impulse, had validity from a drug-induced alcoholic's POV and were really quite hilarious if you think about it. For example ... being so high on Amsterdam pot th ...more

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Aug 28, 2018 Kate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow . . . part of me wants to return to page 1 and re-read; part of me is sad that I'll never read this book for the first time again. Following a young boy through the travails of his chaotic life -- reading so many poignant descriptions of the human experience -- brilliant! ...more

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Jan 18, 2014 Laura Ellis rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle, 2014-read-list

The Goldfinch is the best book I have read in a good while, possibly all year. As soon as I turned the last page, I wanted to re-read it. This is a book that you want to read quickly to find out what happens, yet you want to read slowly to savor its goodness.

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May 10, 2015 Debra rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

If I could, I would give this book 6 stars. This is a beautiful and compelling book. This book moved me on so many levels and the writing is so rich and deep. It is hard to read anything else now because Tartt's characters are so real and not many other authors achieve those types of details.

Here's an excerpt I really loved (quoting from Walden): "A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind." What would Thoreau have made of L ...more

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