The Goldfinch

The painting survives the explosion chained to his backpack. Art outlives everything, stubbornly.

Life is catastrophe. Hobie's antiques, patched and re-glued, quietly disagreed.

Boris and Theo sharing pills and philosophy in Vegas. The best worst influence in modern fiction.

The bird is chained and living. Donna Tartt described most of us in 1654 paint.

Hobie's workshop, repair as a moral philosophy, one chair at a time.

Pippa was never his. The book's most honest sentence about wounds.

The Amsterdam finale reads like a heist written by a fever. Best use of a hotel, ever.

We can't choose what we love. That chain doesn't have a key, says the last page.

His mother's death written in two sentences and the whole book grieving it.

Carried out of it: keep something beautiful near. It argues with catastrophe on your behalf.