Book Review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

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To be frank I’ve only picked up this book when I knew it was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 2014. I don’t usually enjoy crime and mystery and when I read the description on the back, with the word “underworld crime scene”, I almost put it back into the shelf but I had to see what made that novel Pulitzer Prize worthy. Since I’ve imposed the rule of giving up on a book after finishing and not liking the first chapter I consoled myself by my very own rule, only one chapter and if I don’t like it I will put it down. 

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The story is sprawled across 800+ pages, the novel is quite thick but it didn’t matter for the writing is so delicious, it literally is! Leafing through the pages, hungrily gobbling up the words and sentences, is like opening a box of decadent chocolate truffles and promising yourself that this piece is the only piece and before you know it the box is empty and you are floating in a cloud of cocoa-dusted euphoria! The plot doesn’t stall, or pause, or drag on. From page your you are plunged back into young Theo’s life and journeying up through his catastrophic years filled with unfortunate twists and turns until the moment that leads you back to his predicament on the first page. You feel for Theo, you want to reach into him and hold him tight and tell him that everything will be OK when he was a lost young teenager. You want to meet his bubbly character of a mother, see for yourself how someone can be that unique and attractive. You want to shake some sense into him and tell him off when he becomes rowdy and acts up, you want to sit in the kitchen with Hobie -who is my favourite character ever- and have tea while discussing life. When you are fast forwarded in time line of the story, well I don’t know what to think. I’m truly disappointed in Theo but I am making up excuses for him all the time, the boy didn’t have it easy growing up and having Boris as a companion didn’t help things either.

Please be warned that this book got a lot of “I hate it can’t understand how people plow through so much details etc.” Reviews. Personally, I don’t understand the amount of details they are complaining about, if you’ve read Harry Potter books over and over then I suppose any amount of details will be minuscule in comparison although the last chapter I could have done without, it just went on and on like it was summarising he entire novel. I

Disputed amount of details and underworld crime scene or not, this novel is one of the finest I’ve come across in a long time and I can totally see why it was a Pulitzer Prize winner! The Goldfinch is one of those books where you either are pulled in or kept out and if you are one of the lucky ones who gets pulled in, then you are in for a treat most of the way.

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