The Cephalopod Coffeehouse - The Goldfinch

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, whereby we get together and post about the best book you've finished over the past month while visiting other bloggers doing the same.  In this way, we'll all have the opportunity to share our thoughts with other enthusiastic readers.  Please join us by clicking on the pic to see the other participants.

This month I'm going to talk about The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt.

This third book by Tartt is told from the point of view of Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker whose mother is killed in an explosion at a Museum, resulting in his acquisition of a Dutch Masterwork called The Goldfinch, a ring from a dying man, and a lifelong obsession with Pippa, a girl he meets minutes before the explosion. Having been abandoned by his father he ends up - practically by chance - living with the family of a wealthy but geeky friend - mean older brother, typical younger siblings, the strangely cool mother, and the mentally ill but nice father. I think it was this part, when Theo first goes to live with this family, that was most poignant. The way Tartt describes how Theo misses his mother was heartbreaking and the limbo he lives in (more like a guest than anything else), serves to keep Theo apart from the family, and alone.

Then his awful father shows up out of the blue and takes Theo to Las Vegas where he meets Boris, and enough booze and drugs to help him forget. But of course, the painting is still with him, wrapped up tight and hidden in a pillowcase, a constant reminder of something beautiful as well as a source of supreme anxiety for Theo, who fears more than anything its discovery - and the consequences.

My thoughts about this book are perhaps best summed up by this excerpt from the Publishers Weekly review: "...there's a bewitching urgency to the narration that's impossible to resist. Theo is magnetic, perhaps because of his well-meaning criminality. The Goldfinch is a pleasure to read; with more economy to the brushstrokes, it might have been great."

Which was why I was 5 days late getting the book back to the library...

So. What are you reading? Have you read The Goldfinch, or any of Tartts other books?