The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

 

When Theo Decker is thirteen, his life changes forever.  He and his mother are on their way to his school where a possible suspension will be discussed.  They stop at a museum and Theo sees a girl who fascinates him, there with what appears to be her grandfather.  Moments later, an explosion rocks the museum.  Theo can't find his mother who had left to go to the museum shop but he does find the man he thought was the girl's grandfather.  He stays with the man as he dies.  Before he passes, the man gives Theo a ring and a small picture.  The picture is the museum's and is of a goldfinch.  

The man isn't the only victim of the bomb.  Theo's mother is killed also.  His father took off months ago so Theo ends up at the house of a former school friend, a wealthy Park Avenue family.  Grieving and lost, Theo eventually makes his way to the grandfather's house where he discovers Pippa is recuperating under the care of Hobie, the grandfather's partner.  The two ran an antique store with Hobie doing the restoration and the other man running the business.  Hobie is a soothing man who takes Theo under his wing and gives him a space to grieve and start to heal. 

But things soon change again.  Theo's father blows into town to collect him.  He has been living in Las Vegas where he supports himself gambling.  Theo goes to live with him and his girlfriend but the two are mostly gone, leaving Theo to his own devices.  He meets a friend, Boris.  Boris is Ukrainian, his father a mining engineer who stays at the site and leave Boris to his own devices as well.  As is common with unsupervised teenagers, the two become more and more delinquent.  Through it all, Theo keeps the painting hidden; he now knows it is a masterpiece and the police and the art world are searching for it.

The reader then watches the course of Theo's life.  He eventually winds up back in New York where he lives with Hobie and becomes his business partner when he is an adult.  Theo drifts from day to day, relationship to relationship, his own life forever marked by the explosion.  

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize For Fiction.  It is a masterwork.  Theo isn't a saint but he enters the reader's heart and takes up residence.  The reader cannot help but wonder how Theo's life would have turned out if he and his mother had gone straight to his school that day.  Tartt is an author whose infrequent novels are all books the reader will never forget.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.