The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Winner of The 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an astounding novel, with close to a million ratings on Goodreads - 10 out of 10

 

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Winner of The 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an astounding novel, with close to a million ratings on Goodreads

10 out of 10

 

 

You can find everything within The Goldfinch – trying a stupid joke, this is a must, given that you have to read more than one thousand pages – from musings and information on art, painting, furniture, Sheraton (not the hotel, but some very expensive accoutrement) to love and hate, loyalty versus abandonment, Crime and Punishment, addictions to alcohol, drugs, murders and accidents, terrorism and Las Vegas

 

Most of all perhaps, there are very deep thoughts on life, some of the masterpieces of human kind, paintings by Rembrandt, his most promising pupil, Carel Fabritius, who has painted The Goldfinch, quotes from Picasso – ‘the untalented copy, the very gifted steal’, or words to that effect – and interpretations of Proust http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/10/albertine-disparue-by-marcel-proust.html

Theodore Decker, the main character and narrator, is talking to James ‘Hobie’ Hobart and the theme of copies is in discussion, Hobie refers to Swan and the moment when he saw Odette, ruffled one morning, she reminds him of The Madonna by Botticelli, and thus we have the whole of the roman fleuve starting from there, Marcel Proust had never seen the real painting, he saw only a copy, but enough for what is to me the greatest novel ever

 

Boris Pavlikovsky is probably the second most important figure in The Goldfinch (or sharing the spot with Pippa) and they have a talk over another magnum opus, The Idiot http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-idiot-by-fyodor-dostoevsky-one-of.html by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which has impressed Boris so much as to stop reading anything else after that – Prince Mishkin is overwhelming

Indeed, Boris is right, for the Prince aka The Idiot is all beneficence, beatitude and munificence, and yet, he creates havoc, trauma and suffering all around him, for all his generous character and intentions, leading Boris to conclude that good can come from evil, and vice versa, with the conclusion that the missing Goldfinch, which Theo takes at the start of the narrative, may have led to great outcomes

 

Early on, Theo visits the Museum of Art, with his mother, when an explosion takes place, many are killed, including his mother…he is given a ring by a dying man, meets Pippa, and takes the famous Goldfinch with him, staying for some time with the rich Barbour family – later he would return to them – and contacting Hobie, at the shop and home where he finds Pippa again, who is recovering from the explosion

 

We are taken all around the world in this mesmerizing saga, Boris is one that has seen Australia, Papua (or am I inventing this), and we get to spend time with the protagonists in Amsterdam, Antwerp, New York – proving the truth of the quote from To The Hermitage http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/09/to-hermitage-by-malcolm-bradbury-author.html mentioned at the end of these lines – but from New York, Theo has to move in with his alcoholic father, who had abandoned wife and child

Boris and Theo become great friends – though, spoiler alert, the former would teach the latter to shoplift and eventually, would steal from him – and they are indispensable to each other, seeing that both suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they have been through various degrees of abuse, at the hands of addicted fathers, they survive together, getting what they need from supermarkets and getting drunk and high

 

However, Theo’s father is reaching the end of the road, a gambler and drunkard, the man has accumulated huge debts and he is threatened by loan sharks, while losing control of his wretched life, he is killed while drunk driving and that puts his son in a terrible position, he does not want to end up with social services, in a foster home or institution and thus he has to escape on the day of the terrible accident

Boris insists that they leave the next day, which could be too late, Theo has had the experience in New York where authorities acted and could have taken him to an orphanage, he takes the small dog with him, embarking on another adventure (and the readers with him) travelling with the Grey Hound buses, for it would have been impossible with the plane, and he arrives in New York, where he goes to see Hobie, after meeting a mentally disturbed Mister Barbour on the street

 

The author jumps with the narrative for a few years, during which we find (here is another alert, if needed) that Theo has taken control over the sales side of the business which Hobie has, but because this had been practically bankrupt, the young partner had taken to use confidence and other tricks to sell furniture and art pieces as ‘originals’, when in fact they were not, mostly they came out of the hands of the talented Hobie, who is unaware of what was going on, happy that the shop seems to be flourishing

It is more complicated then cheating, many, if not most customers look for bargains, and are often happy to think they have swindled an ignorant seller, but then we have some thugs coming into the picture…Boris returns, and he has a scheme through which they get The Goldfinch back – Theo had thought that he has the valuable chef d’oeuvre in storage, when in fact, it had been taken in Vegas by his close friend

 

Theo is supposed to marry, but when he has a party for the upcoming ceremony, Boris takes him out precipitously and they fly to…Amsterdam, to get the Goldfinch back – the painting had been used by Boris to get shady, underground funding, using the masterpiece as collateral, but it eventually vanished – this is a fabulous, magnificent book, that has kept me in awe for over one thousand pages…

 

Now for my standard closing with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

‚parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”