The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

Plot Description

The novel is a coming-of-age tale told in the first person. The protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum where his mother is killed. While staggering through the debris, he takes with him a small Dutch Golden Age painting called The Goldfinch. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who do not know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: the small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

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About the author

Donna Louise Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American novelist and essayist. Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, the elder of two daughters. She was raised in the nearby town of Grenada. Tartt's novels are The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). Tartt published her first novel, The Secret History in 1992. The book was derived from her time at Bennington College.

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About the painting

The Goldfinch (Dutch: Het puttertje) is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Carel Fabritius of a life-sized chained goldfinch. Signed and dated 1654, it is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. The work is a trompe-l'œil oil on panel measuring 33.5 by 22.8 centimetres (13.2 in × 9.0 in) that was once part of a larger structure, perhaps a window jamb or a protective cover. It is possible that the painting was in its creator's workshop in Delft at the time of the gunpowder explosion that killed him and destroyed much of the city.

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