So I finished The Goldfinch (likely spoilers in discussion)

JCbride2015

And I loved it. Awesome pick. I don't know if I should post about the end yet in case people are still reading. Who's finished and wants to talk? Who's still reading?

theartistformerlyknownas

(Closing my eyes and bumping to remind me to finish this and come back!!)

JCbride2015

I thought the prose was fantastic.  I really loved the writing style.

The story was definitely implausible, but I thought it was a great twist that Boris had the painting all along.  It underscored how ridiculous it was that Theo spent years of his life eaten alive by this secret, when he was really free the whole time.

sophhabobopha

Yeah, I just finished it and wasn't a fan either.

pinkcow13

Honestly I couldn't get into the book. At all. I'm going to try again tonight, but I'm still at like the very beginning.

I think reviews on this book are very black and white - people either loved it or hated it, not much of an in between.

arrippa

I am not quite done yet but my thoughts thus far on the book. I loved the first half of the book. I flew through that. The second half (the adult years) is dragging more. A reviewer on Amazon said that this book felt like it was a  few short stories put into one book. I couldn't agree more with that. One story would be NY through the bombing. Second would be the aftermath in Vegas and the third could be his adult years.

JCbride2015

arrippa said:

I am not quite done yet but my thoughts thus far on the book. I loved the first half of the book. I flew through that. The second half (the adult years) is dragging more. A reviewer on Amazon said that this book felt like it was a  few short stories put into one book. I couldn't agree more with that. One story would be NY through the bombing. Second would be the aftermath in Vegas and the third could be his adult years.

Yeah, I found that I did not so much like the person Theo grew up to be.  Sometimes I appreciate that in a book, though.  You get attached to a character and then they start acting like an asshat-- how do you feel about that as a reader?

FiancB

I am listening to it on audio and just started part 2 so he's still a kid and just got to Vegas. Honestly, I'm not thrilled with it. It keeps me mildly entertained and that's about it. And I'm not terribly picky. Hoping it comes around but anyhoo I'm still really glad this book club thing is a thing.

KytchynWitche

So, it took a while, but I finally finished, and I have to say that I'm not impressed. The author obviously put a lot of work into it, but I really just didn't like it. To me, it felt like Catcher in the Rye (which is possibly my least favourite book ever written) mashed up with Trainspotting and Oliver Twist (or pretty much any Dickens "orphan/poorhouse" work), with a little art theft thrown in "for good measure". It has a decent, if somewhat unrealistic, story but it took far too long to tell it - she could have cut about 2/3 of the book and still told the story. If I'm honest, I only really read 1/3 of it anyway, and just skimmed through the rest. It meanders, which I could forgive if it was truly exquisite prose, but it's not. It's not BAD prose either, it just isn't of the quality or standard that would make up for 16 pages on the hangover he had after getting smashed with Boris. (Exaggeration, obviously, but some of the scenes really did just go on too long for the story or the writing to carry them.) The characters don't feel like people to me. They're caricatures. You know immediately who's good and who's bad, and there doesn't seem to be any "wiggle room" in them at all. With the obvious exceptions of Kitsey, Toddy, and Platt (seriously?), whose characters do a total 180 from childhood to adulthood. Which is pretty unrealistic. I mean, yes, people change as they grow up, but not THAT dramatically. And, as PPs have said, it feels more like a collection of stories than a novel. It lacks the cohesiveness that drives the reader to find out what happens next. I don't feel that the time I spent reading it was wasted, but I certainly wouldn't ever have picked it up for myself, and given the opportunity to read it again I would probably not. ETA: I did have paragraphs, I swear. I'm not criticising other people's writing with no paragraphs of my own!

AddieCake

I just started.

JCbride2015

Wow, I'm shocked that so many of you hated it!  My physical therapist and I spent an entire session waxing poetic about how much we both love the book.  Maybe part of that is because of the portrayal of New York.

Aray82

I was just looking for a thread like this! Only about Halfway through but hoping to get done in the next few days--right now I'm at where Boris's dad beats him up pretty bad. I guess what's really surprising is that I thought there'd be more oversight of the child services department so that Theo would never be placed anywhere near people like Xandra and his dad. Ok--gonna check back in a few days!

Aray82

I'm really late to the party but I finally finished it today and @JCbride2015‌ I thought the portrayals of both NYC and Vegas were spot on, as someone who grew up in NYC and moved to the southwest. At the same time though, @KytchynWitche‌ I skipped over entire paragraphs because, as you said, the prose is not all that exquisite. The navel-gazing Theo does at the very end could especially have been cut short. Still, I think I'd like the give Donna Tartt another chance with her first book which was apparently much better. FILs read The a Goldfinch too and also came across some criticism from folks who were surprised it won the Pulitzer. I also taught at a high school boys' boarding school for awhile so I'm probably already biased against Catcher in the Rye type stories in general :P

LadyMillil

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Aray82 said:

I was just looking for a thread like this! Only about Halfway through but hoping to get done in the next few days--right now I'm at where Boris's dad beats him up pretty bad. I guess what's really surprising is that I thought there'd be more oversight of the child services department so that Theo would never be placed anywhere near people like Xandra and his dad. Ok--gonna check back in a few days!

I didn't find it believable that Theo's mom set up financial stuff for him that his father couldn't access, but didn't set up a guardian for him.

JCbride2015

LadyMillil said:

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Aray82 said:

I was just looking for a thread like this! Only about Halfway through but hoping to get done in the next few days--right now I'm at where Boris's dad beats him up pretty bad. I guess what's really surprising is that I thought there'd be more oversight of the child services department so that Theo would never be placed anywhere near people like Xandra and his dad. Ok--gonna check back in a few days!

I didn't find it believable that Theo's mom set up financial stuff for him that his father couldn't access, but didn't set up a guardian for him.

A lot of the book was pretty unbelievable, but that part wasn't the worst.  The father had only left within the last few months, so if the mother set up the financial stuff while the father was in the picture, she wouldn't have wanted him to access the money but it would never have occurred to her that the father would be gone.

Aray82

LadyMillil said:

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Aray82 said:

I was just looking for a thread like this! Only about Halfway through but hoping to get done in the next few days--right now I'm at where Boris's dad beats him up pretty bad. I guess what's really surprising is that I thought there'd be more oversight of the child services department so that Theo would never be placed anywhere near people like Xandra and his dad. Ok--gonna check back in a few days!

I didn't find it believable that Theo's mom set up financial stuff for him that his father couldn't access, but didn't set up a guardian for him.

I sort of saw that as never thinking that you'll need to prepare for the worst and something like that couldn't happen to you. After seeing Grand Budapest Hotel, I briefly, casually brought up the fact that a will was something we'll want to think about at some point after we get married, and FI turned white. Sometimes, even the most responsible people are just not willing to even think about those dark possibilities.