“That life – whatever else 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 open. 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 a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”

When The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014, I was not the slightest bit surprised. It has been one of my favorite books since I first read it in my freshman year of high school five years ago. I had gotten the book as a gift for Christmas, and had planted myself in my bed for four days – hardly moving, hardly doing anything except for reading its 844 pages. The novel tells the story of Theodore Decker, who loses his mother in a terrorist attack when he is twelve years old. He is now essentially alone in life, with only one constant comfort: The painting of The Goldfinch that he ran off with in the midst of the terrorist attack. The painting becomes the centerpiece of the story, driving the plot forward even when not directly present, and always in the background of the reader’s mind.

One of my favorite aspects of this novel is the degree to which it humanizes its main character. Theo is by no means a paradigm of goodness. Sure, you feel sorry for him, but he also makes a mess out of nearly every situation. He messes up, and learns from his mistakes, and messes up again, and learns, and so forth. You watch him grow over a ten year period, and, quite simply, he gets under your skin. Theo becomes the boy who goes down the wrong path and does everything wrong (i.e. drugs, theft, crime, etc.), but despite it all, you root for him, anyway.

Another facet of the book that I love is simply the style of writing. Donna Tartt’s mastery of the English language is totally evident, and the philosophical and spiritual notions of the book are so elegantly and beautifully expressed that you just want to re-read the sentences, over and over. There is a line from the book: “And if what they say is true – if every great painting is really a self portrait – what, if anything, is Fabritius saying about himself?” In the painting, the goldfinch is chained to a desk, never to move, unable to fly away and escape. The intention of the book is to the reflect the same sort of entrapment in Theo’s life, and mirror that with the same kind of trapped feeling many of us (or at least I) often feel. The book so perfectly describes the yearning people have to go somewhere far away, and their desolation when facing the fact that they are unable to. I have re-read this book every time I just needed inspiration, or just simply needed to feel better. It deals with loss, and pain, and suffering, but presents it in such a way that makes me remember that it is human to feel all of those emotions. It is human to simply feel. I think The Goldfinch succeeds in what is, essentially, the point of every story ever told: To share a small part of the human experience with each other.