The Goldfinch is the story of Theo Decker, a 13-year-old boy whose Mother is killed in an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. It's nearly 800 pages of Theo coping with that loss into his adult life.
First Theo is taken in by his wealthy friend Andy Barbour's family on Park Avenue. Then his deadbeat dad Larry shows up with his girlfriend Xandra and takes him off to Las Vegas. In Vegas Theo meets borderline (okay, actual) criminal Boris, and the two become fast friends/drinking buddies/druggies. Eventually Theo comes back to NYC where he is taken in by, and eventually goes into business with, furniture restorer James Hobart.
Throughout the story is the Goldfinch of the title, a tiny little painting that had been hanging on the wall of the Met when the explosion happened - and which Theo took with him from the rubble, after conversing with Welty Blackwell, Hobart's friend and business partner, who gave him a ring to take to Hobart before he dies of his injuries. The painting will play a major role in Theo's life.
Okay. So, this novel won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Which is why I stuck with it through almost 800 pages. But I skimmed A LOT. The characterizations are great - I liked Boris best - but there are only so many vodka-and-pot-fueled adventures that I can be interested in. And I'm glad I stuck it out to the end, because it was a bit of a surprise.
The Goldfinch
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