The latest addition to my website is Donna Tartt‘s The Goldfinch, her third novel in twenty-one years. This one is another large novel – 800 pages – with undertones of violence and a fantastic read. It has been criticised by some for being a Harry Potter for adults but that is, in my view, a very superficial judgement. The story concerns Theo Decker, who is thirteen at the start of the novel, who is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a terrorist bomb explodes, killing many, including Theo’s mother and injuring others. Theo is stunned but when he recovers, he is able to make his escape, with Fabritius’ Goldfinch in his bag. We follow his life after that, which is affected by the events of that day, including the theft of the painting, his talk with a dying man and, of course, the death of his mother. Tartt gives us a complex and fascinating novel with plot twists, violence and the threat of violence and the struggle of having a satisfactory relationship. This novel only confirms her as one of the leading US novelists.