My book club debated the ending of The Goldfinch for 3 hours and it nearly split the group in half

We were at Linda's house in Brookline and when Sarah said Theo should have let the painting burn I actually threw a pillow at her, so now we have a rule about no personal attacks before 9 PM.

2 comments

2 Comments

loganl224d agoMost Upvoted

Man I gotta admit I used to be team "let the painting burn" all the way too. Read it back in 2013 and thought Theo was just some rich kid who couldn't let go. But then I picked it up again last month and something clicked. The way Tartt writes the scene where he sees the painting in the storage unit in Vegas, that whole filthy room with the light hitting it just right, it made me realize the painting is the only solid thing in his whole messed up life. My buddy Mark went to the actual exhibit at the Met where they had a fake Goldfinch prop and he said it looked like garbage, but that's the point right? The real value isn't in the paint, it's in what it does to Theo's brain over 15 years.

the_margaret3d ago

Hop onto eBay and grab a cheap print of the painting. Stick it somewhere you'll see it every day. I did that with a poster of a Rothko once and it totally changed how I saw the book. You'll start noticing little things about it you never did before.