The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch is an incredibly immersive book about love, friendship, loss,class mobility and purpose interwoven with art history.

Theo is blindsided in New York City by something horrific and spirals. Most of the people around him are not stable or reliable except for antiques dealer, Hobie. Their surrogate father-son relationship is written so sweetly and convincingly that I wanted more Hobie on every page.

Then, Pippa is introduced and Theo's love for her is his constant shadow throughout the rest of the book as much as his mother and The Goldfinch painting itself.

Overall, I loved this book for it's immersiveness and mostly well-written characters, but the typos and grammatical errors toward the end wore on me.

Pippa got her ending "off screen", and Theo's final realization about her was muted and over too soon. I wish their issues would've been hashed out over a phone conversation at least.

I also felt like Boris never got to the point with any of his stories in under a page; that final scene in the Amsterdam hotel between Theo and Boris just felt like obfuscation for page count. I could only handle so many drug-induced, three/four-page fever dreams in one book.

Theo's voice in the final pages also inexplicably dissolved into the author's philosophical voice waxing poetic about life and art--it was distracting, anticlimactic and should've never happened.

Still, this book is a great read.