The Goldfinch discussion

I snagged a copy of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt a while back after watching the movie. I was intrigued by it since I liked the movie, and we all know the books are better than the movies. The book, 962 pages long with small and compact font, seemed daunting at first, yet I became sucked into Theodore Decker’s traumatic life story. I like how Tartt started the book when Theo was thirteen years old, suffering from the loss of his mother after a tragic explosion at the museum, where Theo ended up impulsevly stealing the infamous Goldfinch painting. This painting follows him everywhere, or at least that's what he thinks, and it is a comfort and a symbol to him because it reminds Theo of a better time, where he still had his mother and his “normal” life. In the middle of the book, Tartt flash-forwards the story to where Theo is in his twenties, suffering from repercussions of his childhood traumas and drug use. My favorite part of this novel was the extremely detailed rhetoric Tartt delivers throughout. Theo, suffering from anxiety, PTSD and depression, goes on tangents to the reader, lasting pages and pages. These spills of words and feelings are so specific, and some even relatable, I have never read a book with such fine (and almost obsessive) rhetoric that really expresses real, unromanticized mental illness. One of my personal favorite parts of the book is when, after losing his beloved Goldfinch painting, Theo is stuck alone in an Amsterdam hotel, far away from his home in New York City, contemplating suicide (possibly a concerning scene to like, but let’s pretend it’s not) No dialogue or interactions, we just see pages and pages of Theo's raw thoughts, his numbness, his descent into becoming nothing but a body with a soul left behind. Tartt’s way of writing this made the complexity of emotions understandable and graceful in a way. Highly recommend this book if you are ready to see some sad stuff, but at least it has a somewhat hopeful ending, up to interpretation, I guess.