The Goldfinch

Title: The Goldfinch

Author: Donna Tartt

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

2013

965 pages

Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want to live and be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life and lets you have yours. 

--Boris to Theo in The Goldfinch p.740.

Theo Decker is only thirteen when he and his mother visit Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  Out of the blue a terrorist bombs the place and kills Theo's mother and other art-loving citizen. Theo's life turns upside down since all this time he only lives together with his mother and avoids his alcoholic-abusive father. 

Theo then lives in one of his best friend house, a wealthy family, before finally his father comes and takes him to live with him in Las Vegas where he meets his 'best friend' Boris. When his father at last dies in a car accident, it's time for Theo to start his life all over again.

This book written by Donna Tartt and won lots of awards. To name a few, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014 and Amazon selected the novel as the 2013 Best Book of the Year.  

The quality of the plotting, the characterization and the dialog are consistently excellent. The author explores grief, loss and art in a beautiful way. Let's follow Theo's journey. Started from New York, Las Vegas and ended in Amsterdam. Get ready to feel the ambience of The Catcher in the Rye, Great Expectation and Oliver Twist. Such a rich prose. This almost 1000 pages of book is definitely a page-turner.