The Goldfinch

I loved it. Epic. Rambling. Dickensian in scope and happenings. I won't lie, it is a commitment, but an immensely rewarding one, speaking to our modern American Age and yet fully tethered to the past through art.It's a story to savor and get lost in. No rush. The painting lost/stolen is just a frame to hang a bigger story where big questions are posed, along with the mundane, and no answer is given. It's not expected. Along with the sadness, is a funny, almost picaresque tale, brimming with life that spans past and present and over 700 pages I still wanted it to go on. Our narrator, unreliable as the best are, is Theo Decker, a boy who at 13 suffers the unimaginable loss of his mother in a terrorist attack. So starts Theo's journey as an orphan, first in a sublimely rendered NYC, with its local uptown & downtown fauna, and later in the mirage dream of the west via Las Vegas. [a:Donna Tartt 8719 Donna Tartt https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409871301p2/8719.jpg] has created characters that brim with life and live outside the page: Theo, Boris, Andy, Hobie. I loved them all and surely expect to run into them at any moment. I was lucky enough to also pair this with [a:David Pittu 572486 David Pittu https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png]'s masterful audio rendition. Wow.