The Goldfinch in 2015 Book Challenge

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Aug 17, 2014 Devon rated it really liked it

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Donna Tartt did not miss a beat with this book. Not one. Single. Beat. The conversations her characters had were absolute perfection. Every detail from the art world to the process of refurbishing antiques to the seedy Las Vegas suburbs was perfectly researched. The reader can clearly see why a book like The Goldfinch would take any skilled author ten years to write. It takes an uncompromising amount of focus and patience to produce a work like this.

I have so many thoughts and I don't know if t Donna Tartt did not miss a beat with this book. Not one. Single. Beat. The conversations her characters had were absolute perfection. Every detail from the art world to the process of refurbishing antiques to the seedy Las Vegas suburbs was perfectly researched. The reader can clearly see why a book like The Goldfinch would take any skilled author ten years to write. It takes an uncompromising amount of focus and patience to produce a work like this.

I have so many thoughts and I don't know if they are all coherent so I am going to write the next part of my review in bullet points.

-Boris was far and away my FAVORITE character in this book! I was giddy when after being gone so long his character returned to the book!

-As a mother this book broke my heart. To think of how Theo's life, at the age of thirteen, completely and irrevocably fell apart after his mothers death. As I was reading I kept thinking "this is every mothers worst nightmare."

-I noticed some reviewers thought that the book wasn't coherent and the tone changed from New York to Vegas back to New York and Amsterdam and while I agree I also thought...well that's life. Life isn't coherent and the tone can change due to circumstances. Theo's life for most of the book was in upheaval and this was all happening during his most formative years. People change, HE changed and the tone of the book in each section reflected that. I don't think any part of this book was unintentional on Tartt's part and I think it all worked.

-I also think I was hoping for a different ending. Not necessarily a happier one and not necessarily one with more answers but maybe one with a little more punch. The ending may have been totally perfect for this book but I think because I was expecting something else it just missed the mark for me. Or maybe I read it too late in the evening and was too tired to fully appreciate it. That's totally possible.

-Very minor final thought: did anyone else notice that somehow Theo was 15 and then 8 years pass and all of a sudden he was 26? Or the fact that if this took place in present day that the bombing would have had to have taken place in the late 90's or early 2000's but clearly did not due to the technology Theo had acess to. The math in this book bothered me often because I thought maybe it was a plot point that would be revealed later but it wasn't. Or maybe I just don't get the significance. Please comment on this point!

I am vacillating between a 4 and 5 star review here. I thought that I would sleep on it and have a clear idea of my thoughts in the morning, but no such luck. I spent the morning reading other reviewers thoughts hoping to crystallize my own. In doing so I did notice my habit to staunchly defend the book when reading some of the negative reviews however I also realized that although I liked The Goldfinch A LOT, really really liked it a lot...I didn't fall head over heels in love with it as some of the other reviewers had. It didn't quite have that emotional zing for me. Which could quite possibly be because it was a very emotionless book, intentionally so. I say all this with a grain of salt, my thoughts, over time, could very well change as they sometimes do (ie Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics which I have just grown to love and appreciate more in the months since reading it) so who knows a future edit may be coming. ...more

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Nov 17, 2013 Devon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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