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Overview
Donna Tartt’s expansive coming-of-age novel The Goldfinch tells the story of Theodore Decker, who survives a deadly bombing at age thirteen
. The event determines the path of his life until age twenty-seven when he narrates the tale, a crazy path through addiction, crime, fine art, and philosophy. A small, captivating painting of a goldfinch by one of Rembrandt’s students is both the literal and symbolic focus of the novel. The painting represents not only loss and captivity but also permanence and acceptance. The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014.
