The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Yes this was a very long book. I could not put it down. 3 stars is liked it and 4 stars is really liked it. For me it was in between the two, good story and glad I read it.

BIG SPOILER, I really thought Theo had the painting all along. I never saw it coming that Boris had it. Even when Lucius showed him the info about the Miami deal, I still didn't think Boris had it.

It was interesting to see if a person is good or bad depending on genes or environment or both. Theo just had a sucky life. It was also interesting that Boris had a sucky life but was always happy.
I really liked Hobie.
It was hard for me to believe that Mrs. Barbour would just give up on life and retreat to her room. The whole Barbour family was pretty messed up.
The Lucius Reeve guy sure was smarmy.

The drug use in this book OMG. And the descriptions of what Theo and Boris were feeling when they were on drugs....made me truly wonder if the author wasn't doing drugs at the moment she was writing that part of the book. Because sometimes it felt like it was different people writing different parts of the book.

For the amount of words in this book I found it annoying that the words Punch Drunk and Punchy turned up so frequently.

I keep thinking about what happens after,
Does Theo return home?
If so does he still get married?
What is the business that Boris is in? He has never killed anyone so what is it?
Will Theo ever go work with Boris?
How old is Popchyk anyway?

If I have to describe this book in one word it is "DRAG" oooon and oooon and oooooon. If you want a biggest piece of time waster, friends you have found it.

How the FFF did this book become #1 best seller again?!?? Oh right, never mind, don't answer that because the same thing happened to Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey too.

Don't get me wrong, Tartt writes well, really well. But she writes like one of those people that have too many great ideas but all unrelated, and then decide to just put all of them together and call it a book. This feels like a One pot dish of about 30 random ingredients, just because each individual ingredient is good doesn't mean they are great together.

If you want to understand how I feel this way please read all the 1-2 star reviews below. They described exactly how I feel about the book, I should have listened to them :'(

I was asking myself why I am reading this book so many times. I wanted to stop. It's such a long and not very easy read. Story follows little boy who loses his mom and have to move across the country to live with his dad. It follows him over the years. In the end I'm glad I read it. Definitely worth the time and effort.

I just finished the goldfinch. It was really well written, great characters, Boris was awesome. Potter's inability to see or understand the friendship was very interesting as was their incredible drug dependency. Personally I loved the talk of the woodworking; I learned a lot from that and it was fascinating.

Furthermore, I really enjoyed how the story really grew and developed. By-in-large, it felt complete though

A tremendous work - truly. Donna Tartt is extremely talented. I learned a great deal about the art work and the business of art - and also how deeply art work affects people - how some of our great works are indeed timeless and its fascinating to think that works created so many years ago can have such an impact hundreds of years later. Also very interesting to contemplate Theo's view on life - rather dark and not overly optimistic but true. Life is such a random string of events and I kept waiting for him to stop obsessing over this but he can't. Many people can't accept the life they have inherited. Such great character descriptions. You just love and hate Boris, don't you? Super interesting at the end to compare and contrast Theo and Boris' views on life and happiness or lack thereof. I thoroughly enjoyed this and marveled at the skill it required to write it.