After Donna Tartt’s prize-winning novel The Little Friend, she published The Goldfinch in 2013, a novel that won her a much-deserved Pulitzer. The novel has been described as a latter-day Dickensian work, hailed as “a soaring masterpiece” by the Washington Post and as “a triumph” by Stephen King. Does it soar? Is it a triumph?
The Goldfinch does fly, although there are times when it hovers. It is nevertheless a remarkably beautiful, well-crafted Bildungsroman about Theo Decker, a pre-adolescent youth in New York City who is on the cusp of a new beginning. (more…)