American writer Donna Tartt is the author of quite successful intellectual novels The Secret History (1992) and Little Friend (2002). But the success of the third, “The Goldfinch”, exceeded all expectations: the book won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and went out with a circulation of more than 1,5 million copies.
Enjoy long reading. 13-year-old Theo Decker ran with his mother to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art – to hide from a sudden downpour. During the minutes spent here, Theo managed to admire the picture of the 832th century Dutch artist Karel Fabritius “Goldfinch”, to see an elegant old man with a red-haired girl and go deaf from a terrible explosion – a terrorist attack in the museum. Theo receives a strange order from the old man, and soon finds out about the death of his mother. From this threshold, he dives into a stream of suffering and adventure that spans XNUMX pages. Finding yourself already in the epilogue, do not be surprised: you are in the same company with millions of readers who also could not stop reading this book, full of incredible events and meetings.
Read more:
- Museums at home
Live in a scary story. By inventing an explosion that never happened, Tartt consciously breaks through the wall of reality and plunges us into a fantasy space. Theo lives in a world populated by exotic characters and outlandish things – it is so colorful and bright only in a fairy tale or in childhood. This clever and dazzlingly beautiful adult tale combines the flavor of a Dickensian sentimental novel, the mystery of Nesbe’s intellectual detective, and the energy of a contemporary TV series. The plot lines are connected here with jewelry subtlety, and the characters are alive. But, captivating the reader, the author does not hide his intention to talk seriously – about art, about its meaning for those living on earth.
Think beautiful. The fascination of the “Goldfinch” does not obscure the result, to which Theo, who has matured, comes in the finale. Art gives the opportunity to communicate “through the ages”. After living with the hero for fourteen years, this does not sound speculative – on the contrary, it seems to be true: “beauty must be saved from the fire and preserved so that our conversation with each other will never be interrupted.”
Translation from English by Anastasia Zavozova.
AST, Corpus, 832 p.