The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Could be the worst book I've ever not finished. I gave up. I had to.

I enjoyed the story well enough, but I had a lot of house cleaning to do while listening to it, and that made it easier to get through a story that could've been told with about 30% fewer words.

I'm on the fence with this one. I loved parts of it, but others just seemed to go on forever with no real purpose for all the wordiness and unnecessary character inner dialogue. Yes, it was pretty, gritty and whimsical, but a bit tedious to read. I did find myself skimming/scanning over a few chapters.

I think I just have a hard time enjoying a book where the protagonist is an unlikable person. While I can empathize with the scars trauma can leave on someone (the presumed reason for Theo's downfall), I hate reading a long book about an extremely unlikable person who does a series of harmful, shitty things and never finds redemption. Theo becomes progressively thoughtless, careless, and selfish. He consistently harms himself and all the people who have been kind to him. No one truly holds him accountable. The small bit of atonement at the end was someone only a privileged white boy could get away with. In the end, I was rooting for an overdose or overseas arrest.

The only reason I didn't rate this even lower is because it was written so beautifully. The author is an exquisite writer, and the characters are very well fleshed out, I just didn't like the story or the protagonist.

I like that the book did not follow the traditional rainbow and butterfly storylines. It made you think and ponder. Many people love the tiny details- I found myself skipping many of them. I thought the author showed her hand a bit at times and most parts were very predictable. I didn’t dislike the book but I would recommend it to a friend nor did it change my life.