Friday Reads: Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch"

As I've been reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, this year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize, I cannot help but think about preservation in the face of decay. Certainly the theme is there in this coming-of-age tale of 13-year-old Theodore Decker, whose world is (literally) blown to pieces when a bomb explodes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theo crawls out of the museum rubble, carrying a priceless painting of Carel Fabritius' "The Goldfinch," and the novel takes off from there. Theo, still dealing with the psychological and physical aftershocks, is moved from world to world—from Park Avenue high society, to West Village antique shops, to the desolate & foreclosed subdivisions outside Las Vegas.