The Goldfinch: The Book I Wanted to Just Fly Away

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

The Goldfinch is a book I loved and then hated. Before even opening the book, I was skeptical as the subject was not one that interested me. I had read about the author, Donna Tartt, in a magazine promoting one of her other novels. When I searched for the audio version of that book on my Overdrive app, it was not available. Since The Goldfinch was, I decided to give it a listen.

The book began by capturing my heart with the rich character development of Theo. The first-person storytelling allowed the reader to dive deep into the main character’s mind from the very beginning. The dialogues from Theo’s perspective were enhanced with the details and scenery he meticulously described. Tartt did a fantastic job of taking this story to another level which enticed and engaged me. I never remembered that the plot was uninteresting to me. I wanted to know the characters better.

I spent the first half of the book becoming immersed in Theo’s tragic life and the tragic lives of all the people who he encountered. Then, slowly but steadily, all the tragedy became overwhelmingly gloomy and dark.

At some point, Tartt stopped telling a story and started painting a picture. The detail that I admired so much in the first half of the book became cumbersome and overdone in the second. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page were dedicated to illustrating the mood or the setting or the character's appearance. So much time was spent on describing, that I forgot what was happening with the story. I forgot what was happening with the characters. 

Even a simple dialogue exchange was lost in the middle of adjective after adjective after moody adjective.

Because I was listening to and not reading the book, I did not have the luxury of flipping through the pages of description to find out how a sentence or thought ended. It was tedious and torturous.

I stopped loving the book. I began dreading the book. I was over 400 pages in and wanted to know how the story resolved so I suffered sifting through all the fancy words and darkness to find the point.

As I listened to Theo agonize through the bulk of his life, I wanted to be his cheerleader. I wanted to like him. I wanted to like someone, anyone in this book. Aside from his mentor and father figure Hobie, I found none of the people who touched Theo’s life likable. I despised them all.

Hour after hour, day after day listening to this laboriously long tale, I was overcome with the feelings of sadness and doom. These hopeless and helpless characters darkened my days. The fact that I refused to stop the audio feed and that I actually renewed the book from the library, says something. But, what? Am I glutton for punishment? Or, is the author so good that she convinced me that deep down I really loved this book?

I admire the literary depth and heft of this novel. The author did a phenomenal job comprising the prose to create the mood and foreshadowing. I truly felt like I was there with Theo and Boris, I just didn’t want to be there. I felt like I could see the art and the architecture. I felt sick and miserable all the times Theo did. I felt sad and lost and lonely. Even on the rare sunny days here, I felt dark and dismal as I drove listening to David Pittu narrate the story using his gift of acting to create distinct voices and accents for each miserable character in Theo’s life.

I suppose for those of you who love an epic, well written, moody tale about how a person’s life can be permanently derailed by fate, The Goldfinch is for you. I understand why it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, it’s just not my cup of tea.