The Goldfinch
A small Dutch painting and a boy who should not have it. Tartt wrote a Dickens novel for the 21st century and it is absolutely enormous in every sense.
The Painting That Survived
Donna Tartt's 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner follows Theo Decker from the moment a bomb explodes in a New York museum where he is waiting for his mother. She dies. He escapes with a small Dutch masterwork called The Goldfinch, painted by Carel Fabritius in 1654. The novel follows Theo across thirteen years of orphanhood, addiction, antiques dealing, friendship, and loss, as the painting remains the one beautiful, dangerous constant in his life. Tartt took eleven years to write it. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014.
Reading The Goldfinch
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"Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair.
"Donna Tartt · The Goldfinch
Tartt spent eleven years writing the novel. She has published only three novels in her career and said the long gaps are because she will not publish a book she cannot stand behind entirely.
The novel sold over a million copies in its first year and sparked debate about literary quality versus popular acclaim. Numerous critics who panned it were forced to reconsider after it won the Pulitzer.