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| Grief, Loss and Art |
Over 10 years since her last outing with 'The Little Friend,' Donna Tartt's latest novel follows a grief-stricken Theo Decker, whose mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theo, who finds himself amongst the destruction, panicked and disoriented, escapes with a valuable painting, Fabritius’s ‘The Goldfinch.’ As Theo moves away to Las Vegas to live with his father, his fixation with the painting, and the need to protect it, becomes symbolic of his grief, loss and the life he left behind.
It's difficult to not be sucked in by Tartt's beautiful prose and this is where the novel really shines. It is littered with a cast of bright, wonderful and weird characters that could’ve been plucked directly from a work of Dickens, whilst still maintaining relevance to the seedy Vegas back drop. Even the novel experience of just getting to know them all and watching them hurl through life together, as you’re immersed in this sprawling narrative, is a treat in itself.
The end left me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth whilst at the same time wholly satisfied. Whether I may or may not have agreed with the overall sentiment at the end of the book, I had to remember that after nearly 800 pages, it wasn’t my life I was living. It was Theo Decker’s. Fans may have had to wait 10 years for Tartt’s return but if you were anything like me, for a novel as triumphant as this, I would happily wait another 10 years for the next.
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