Read of the Week: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

In a new weekly feature, a member of The Reader team will recommend one of their favourite books for your reading pleasure!

This week, Amanda from the Criminal Justice team recommends Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize winning The Goldfinch.

“To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole;” - Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

"Exhilarating and profound, grim and beautiful, The Goldfinch is part edge-of-the-seat page-turner and part philosophical reflection. A bomb blast alters the life of the narrator who, cut loose by grief, stumbles through adolescence and young adulthood. He’s flawed and facetted and fascinating – illuminating the muddles we make and endure in life and the glimmering possibility that good can follow bad.

I stayed up late reading, re-read early sections and finally, reluctantly, reached the end of the 864th page. And the little painting that you catch glimpses of throughout the book, a tiny Dutch masterpiece, is key to this story and to an understanding that great art offers us a chance to ‘speak of each other across time’."

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life” - Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch