"I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe." 
 Donna Tartt is my hero. Ever since I read "The Secret History", Tartt has been one of my favorite authors, and I still remember my first meeting with her as an awe-inspiring experience. 
 "The Goldfinch" has received a lot of coverage in the media. It has received rave reviews and a world of praise. For some it may seem very hyped - but for a very good reason. In the course of the last 22 years, Tartt has written three novels. Donna Tartt is not just a writer, she is an artist, and each book she writes is a intricate work of art. Whenever Donna Tartt writes a new book, it not only a new release - it is an event. 
 And the thing is, Donna Tartt never disappoints. As you read through her books, you can tell how much work she has put into her words. You can almost feel how each letter has been carefully selected as a piece in a much larger puzzle. Every chapter has been pulled apart and been put together, over and over again, for each word to fit. 
 Of course I expected quite a lot from "The Goldfinch". And, as always, it didn't disappoint. It didn't let me down. 
 "...my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky." 
 In many ways, "The Goldfinch" is a tribute, an open love letter to art; paintings, novels and history. Tartt spins her entire brick of a novel around a beautiful painting by Carel Fabritius. Theo's life is deeply intertwined by the painting, and he constantly muses about what it means to be a lover of art, a collector of beautiful things. Tartt seems to explore, not only the meaning of art, but the effect it has on us as human-beings. 
 This is such a refined and deeply cultivated novel, and any lover of art and literature will fall in love with it for its numerous references and intertextuality. Tartt writes about Rembrandt, Fabritius and even Manet - she mentions Proust and compares her main character to Harry Potter. 
 The Dickens-references are obvious; Theo is a penniless orphan as well as Oliver Twist, and his journey exposes him to abuse, robbery and despair. Tartt is just as ambitious and her novel is just as wide as those Dickens are know for. Even the page numbers matches. 
 But "The Goldfinch" isn't merely a coming-of-age novel. It is an odyssey, almost an occult journey through the challenges and downfalls of Theo's life. 
 "Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you." 
 Theo is such a complex and interesting main character. At some point his arrogance reminded me of Pip from Dickens' "Great Expectations", but unlike Pip, Theo is weighted down by his happy prospects - not encouraged by them. 
 Tartt allows Theo to tell the story in his own words. The reader only knows what Theo knows and he is extremely unreliable. Not only did he suffer from a concussion in the beginning of the novel, he is constantly numbed by drugs and alcohol. 
 Theo doesn't know everything and he doesn't tell everything. His brain cannot contain all his agony, and he is drunk and senseless as a consequence. In the middle of the novel a major plot twist appears because of this; Theo has built his entire existence upon a flaw in his memory. 
 "What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?" 
 This was such an awe-inspiring reading experience for me. Tartt writes flawlessly and so well-polished. As I read "The Goldfinch" I found so many things to wonder at, so many passages I'd like to quote that it seems utterly impossible to highlight something in particular. 
 "The Goldfinch" was a novel worth waiting for.