The Goldfinch

I was going to give The GoldFinch 4 stars but the last 200 or so pages just dragged on and on and I was fairly disappointed with the ending to tell the truth.

Theo is a great character, he's likeable and I liked his realness. I just felt bad for him throughout the first 3/4 of the book, up until he made a very terrible decision over and that is when I started hating that stupid little painting. Why Theo? Why? And Boris - dude, what the hell??

Anyway, Donna Tartt makes very believable MALE characters. I feel that the female characters weren't fleshed out as much as the male characters. But she is a very talented writer and very brave for putting so much death into this story - I thought I was reading George RR Martin for a second, with every character she kills off.

The Goldfinch was totally not what I was expecting at all. In fact, I don't think I even knew a single thing about it before I picked it up - it's sat on my bookshelf for near on 4 years waiting for me to get started but I was always reading something else. I'm glad I finally got around to it but the massive 800 pages were a little much and it could have been around 200 pages shorted in my opinion.