The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

published 2013

Not knowing what to do, I started walking down St Mark’s toward Tompkins Square. All Day All Night. You Must be Twenty One To Enter. Downtown, away from the high-rise press, the wind cut more bitterly and yet the sky was more open too, it was easier to breathe. Muscle guys walking paired pit bulls, inked-up Bettie Page girls in wiggle dresses, stumble-bums with drag-hemmed pants and Jack O’Lantern teeth and taped-up shoes. Outside the shops, racks of sunglasses and skull bracelets and multi-colored transvestite wigs. There was a needle exchange somewhere, maybe more than one but I wasn’t sure where; Wall Street guys bought off the street all the time if you believed what people said but I wasn’t wise enough to know where to go or who to approach, and besides who was going to sell to me, a stranger with horn rimmed glasses and an uptown haircut…?

observations: I deliberately read very little about The Goldfinch before starting it, and that turned out to be a really good idea, and one I strongly recommend to anyone else.

[So if you’re contemplating it, stop reading this NOW, bookmark it, and come back when you’ve finished. There aren’t any spoilers, but it’s best to come to the book blank.] 

I had gathered the initial premise: young Theo is in a NY museum when it is attacked by terrorists, and loses his mother, but walks out with a valuable picture, The Goldfinch of the title (which is a real picture, by Fabritius, in The Hague). I had no idea what was going to happen to him after that, and so the book was full of tension and surprises – I didn’t know what kind of story it was going to be, and that was all to the good.

And it was fabulous, a huge adventure story with a serious core, amazingly funny, very perceptive and observational, and full of fascinating details about art (‘boring picture of fat-faced man you don’t know’) and art theft - and also antique furniture*, Las Vegas, drugs, drug addiction, NY upper classes, how to smuggle a dog onto a Greyhound bus, and on and on. It is a breath-taking book: her ability to inhabit different worlds is extraordinary – how does she know? How does she do the dialogue so well? Does she know the kind of low-lifes who pop up here and there? 

*There is a recipe for furniture polish, which might have fitted nicely into the blog piece on recipes in books. 

There are a few scenes and sections that go on too long (presumably no-one will edit her) and the loss of the passport seemed a clunky plot device. But these are tiny criticisms over the length of a book that gives you a whole world, and otherwise has an almost-perfect structure.

The description of his walk above reminded me instantly of the pictures of James Jowers: his marvellous photos of New York life are available from George Eastman House via Flickr and I have used them on the blog before (for example here and here). The one above is called St Mark’s Place.

The book would also have suited this picture:

-- a photo I have had in mind for ages, and finally found a great fit for in last months Impossible Object.