I personally loved the Goldfinch. My take on the book, is that is an exploration of the question ‘what is real art’, which makes the debate about whether it deserves the Pulitzer sort of meta. There are lots of examples throughout the book, both large plot points and small bits of dialogue, but mainly his relationship with the painting itself >!And how it means so much to him for years even though he literally doesn’t know it’s missing and is in fact carrying around an empty canvas!<. Similarly, a huge plot point of the last third of the book, (which I’ll admit was not my favorite part of the book), was Theo’s forgery of antiques, and how no one noticed until it was pointed out.

And maybe this is a stretch, but I think the ending could feed into this as well. Does something need a tragic, ultra-realist ending to be considered art? Of course, there are many options in between tragic and super tidy, but I think this could’ve been purposeful. And yes, things come together in Dickensian coincidences to evade disaster, but it still feels sort of eery and depressing - he’s traveling around from soulless hotel to soulless hotel, still doing drugs, with the questionable Boris and a big question mark on his relationships with Hobie and Kitsy. It’s a happy ending, but is it really that happy? Maybe this is silly, but I felt the overly coincidental and tidy ending played into the eeriness of the ending as well.

Oh, and I also think this book pays direct and very blatant homage to David Copperfield. But that’s a whole other thing and I’m not sure why she chose that book particularly.