Upcoming Books:
|
is reading The Goldfinch written by Donna Tartt for March 27, 2014.
Charlotte Abbott at Publishers Weekly describes Donna Tartt, the author of this critically acclaimed novel as a Lolita-sized literary who can spout Nabokov and Eliot by heart. Tartt draws readers in by masterfully blending the grotesque, the humorous and the dramatic elements into a book that is hard to put down and after almost 800 pages leaves you wanting more. The narrator and hero of the novel is thirteen-year-old Theo Decker, whose life changed in a matter of moments. One moment, Theo and his mother are admiring the Carel Fabritius painting The Goldfinch at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the next moment, his mother is dead and he is covered in rubble from a terrorist bombing at the museum. He crawls over to a dying stranger, who gives him a cryptic message and a ring then urges him to save the painting, which he does. And, like the little yellow bird in the painting fated to his perch by the chain around its "twig of an ankle," Theo is chained to The Goldfinch. To Theo, the attachment to the painting becomes the symbol of his attachment to his beloved mother making him unable to relinquish it. Guilt ridden, he carries this painting with him throughout the years. With this premise, Tartt takes us on Theo's wild and magical journey full of twists and turns, and richly complex and unforgettable characters. Author Quotes: “I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive." ― Donna Tartt from Brainy Quotes |