Book Review - The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of Theo Decker and how his life is completely turned upside down by a bombing at an art gallery is spectacular. Tartt is undoubtedly a superb writer who gets the pulse of her characters and her readers.

The first part of the book which deals with Theo's relationship with his mother, the incidents leading up to, during and after the bombing are excellently written. There's a realism to how Theo is feeling and all the activities around him just after the incident that strike a chord with a person.

Unfortunately, after this, the book sort of goes off on a tangent that it never returns from. Theo moves in with his estranged father and his father's girlfriend, befriends a Russian with a troubled family and heads down the familiar path of teenage drugs and alcohol addiction. It's the towing of this all too familiar cliche that takes away from the book. It also treads on the character development and realism that the beginning chapters effortlessly put together.

I feel the central conceit of the painting also seemed tacked on; it never felt like it belonged to the story (it doesn't matter if that's where the book originated, it just isn't where the story wanted to go).

Some parts of the story felt too convenient, others too contrived. All throughout, the writing was brilliant and kept you hooked, but those initial chapters that tugged at your heart seemed to have been in vain and wasted away.

'The Goldfinch' is just too complicated for its own good. Tonally it forgets itself, which does itself and its writer a great disservice.

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