The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

I still haven't read the blurb - I need to do that - so I went into this audio book blindly. I'm happy I did because I was so pleasantly surprised that I never knew what was going to happen.

In a nutshell, I enjoyed this book a great deal. The characters were so real and complex, even a good number of the secondary characters, that I felt invested in the various story arcs. The only reason I'm not going five stars is because I felt some of the passages about art and furniture went on too long and I found my attention wandering away from the book while the narrator went on for what must have been pages of background information. Much of it was interesting and certainly showed how vast Theo's knowledge was but it couldn't hold my attention.

I finished the book yesterday evening and I'm actually missing Theo and Boris and Hobie.

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.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings towards this book. For the first few chapters, I just loved it so much and thought It'll surely end up in my 4-star list if the quality is consistent, even after Theo went to Vegas his experiences with loneliness and guilt feeling about the painting and his mother seems very intriguing even though I hated the side characters like Boris, Theo's father and his father. But after the time skip Theo's lamenting about Pippa was so irritating to read oof, Theo's failures in his personal life and constant listless actions seemed so boring smh. Then Boris's ridiculous prank with The painting put cheery on top of my annoyance, the plot twist seemed so much force. (hide spoiler)]
So my overall rating is 3.75/3.5 ⭐ out of 5

I couldn't get into it. I tried for half the book, but just couldn't.