Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A painting acts as a talisman for a young boy.
The Goldfinch
What you need to know before your trail
Theo Decker,is thirteen when he survives an accident that tears his life apart. His life before that moment was alone with his mother and he lived a quiet happy life despite having a reckless, largely absent father.
But that one day changes everything . Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by the loss of his mother however and and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld.
As he grows up, that painting continues to haunt him in ways he never could have imagined and as he learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works, the painting places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
New York
The thrill of the museum in New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
“Whenever she had a few hours to herself she always headed straight to the Frick, or the MOMA or the Met – which is why, as we stood under the dripping portico of the museum, gazing out across hazy Firth Avenue and the raindrops jumping white in the street, I was not surprised when she shook her umbrella out and said: “Maybe we should go in and poke around for a bit until it stops”
“The Great Hall was loud, and rank with the smell of wet overcoats.” “For me – a city kid, always confined by apartment walls – the museum was interesting mainly because of its immense size, a palace where the rooms went on forever and grew more and more deserted the father in you went some of the neglected bedchambers and roped-off drawing rooms in the depths of European Decoration felt bound- up in deep enchantment, as if no one had set foot in them for hundreds of years”
Las Vegas
Despite being in Vegas for six months he has hardly been to the strip so it is still a place of wonder for him:
“We stared in amazement at the waterfalls of neon, electricity blazing and pulsing and cascading down in bubbles all around us…”
The Venetian Hotel
Inside the Venetian, gondoliers propelled themselves down a real canal, with real, chemical smelling water, as costumed opera singers sang Still Nacht and Ave Maria under artificial skies”
Streetview Maps
B) NYC - The Met museum
E) Las Vegas - The Bellagio Hotel
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Goldfinch
Author/Guide: Donna Tartt Destination: New York City, Las Vegas Departure Time: 2000s
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
