books i love: the goldfinch

Every time I finish reading the last page of a good book, I look around, and realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives and that what I just read didm;t really affect anyone around me. It's as though I didn't just experience the sequence of emotions and immediately I feel the trauma of letting go of the characters. Because I know that as soon as I take my hands of the paperback, they will cease to exist. 

It is pretty traumatizing. You may even say it is weird. But I go through it every single time, and it never seems to get any better. Anyways, I have recently just finished reading Donna Tartt's, The Goldfinch and may I say WOW! Never expected it to turn out to be an outstanding book. Never thought it would bring me to tears and give me goosebumps all through the last chapter. Needless to say, I am feeling nostalgic about letting go of Theo, Boris, and Hobie. So, to make matters easier, I decided to re-read my favorite part of the book and write it down for you to read :) 

"Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existing reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life - whatever it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts opened. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and privilege to love what Death doesn't touch." 

Have you read The Goldfinch yet? What was your take on it?

xoxo,

m