The goldfinch (novel)

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The goldfinch (original title: The Goldfinch ) is a novel by American writer Donna Tartt . The book was first published on October 22, 2013 by Little, Brown and Company , the German translation by Rainer Schmidt and Kristian Lutze was published on March 10, 2014 by Goldmann Verlag .

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The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius (1654), Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague

At the age of 13, the first-person narrator, Theodore Decker, lost his mother to a terrorist bombing while visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum . Even injured by the explosion, he stands by the dying Welton Blackwell, whose niece Pippa he had noticed before the attack. Theodore is finally able to free himself from the devastated museum rooms and, at Blackwell's insistence, lets the painting The Goldfinch by the Dutch painter and Rembrandt student Carel Fabritius go with him in a plastic bag. From then on, the painting will accompany him through the plot of the novel. Blackwell also entrusts him with his carnelian ring and gives him the name of his company in Greenwich Village .

Theodore Decker initially stayed with the wealthy family of his classmate Andy Barbour for a few months. Some time later he made contact with James Hobart, the business partner of the late Welton Blackwell, with whom Hobart had operated an antique workshop and trade. He now often stays with Hobart (called "Hobie"), whom he regards as a fatherly friend and from whom he learns the basics of furniture restoration. At Hobie he meets Pippa again, who had also survived the attack and who is now only slowly recovering from the serious injuries. Theo falls in love with Pippa, by a custodial be brought aunt in her house.

This situation changes abruptly when Theodore's father, Larry Decker, calls in, who had left his family some time before the novel began. He, an alcoholic professional player and former minor actor, takes Theodor to Las Vegas, where he lives with his girlfriend Xandra.

There Theodore met the Ukrainian of the same age, Boris, with whom he had a deep friendship that was characterized on the one hand by joint thieves, alcohol and drug excesses, and on the other by the mutual understanding and trust that unites the two half-orphans.

After Larry Decker is killed in a car accident, the now 15-year-old Theodore decides to flee Las Vegas so as not to come into state custody. Together with Boris, he steals from Xandra and drives to New York, where Hobie takes him in. The stolen painting, which Theodore had looked at repeatedly during his time in Las Vegas and finally packed tightly, he deposited in a rental locker in a warehouse in order to prevent accidental discovery. He only sees Pippa briefly, as she now lives in a Swiss boarding school.

Novels translated into German by Donna Tartt

After a leap in time of eight years, the second half of the novel shows Theodore as a young adult, who has meanwhile become Hobie's business partner and who, as a seller, was able to bring the ruined antique shop to new success. This was only possible because Theodore sold a whole range of Hobie's skilfully restored furniture as valuable originals to unsuspecting nouveau riche. Theo is still a drug addict and spends a large part of the business income on his addiction, Hobie doesn't know anything about that and doesn't want to know either.

At this time Theo comes into contact with the Barbours again. He learns that his school friend Andy was killed in a sailing accident along with his mentally confused father. Theo befriends Andy's sister Kitsey, and after a while they both make wedding plans.

Theodore surprisingly meets Boris in New York, who is now very successful in criminal business. Their friendship seems to revive immediately, but is weighed down by Boris' confession, who admits that he had discovered the painting in Las Vegas and exchanged it for a dummy . In the course of a larger drug deal , the picture used as a deposit was then lost.

To get the painting back, they both fly to Amsterdam to follow up a lead there. The attempt fails, and Theodor shoots one of the criminals. Theodor is stuck in Amsterdam and falls into drug addiction. Boris, meanwhile, ensures that the art police can find the picture together with other stolen works of art in a criminal depot and, as a tipster, tricked himself into receiving the millions in rewards, most of which he gave Theo. He returns to New York and uses the money to buy back the antiques from the customers he has betrayed. His engagement with Kitsey is pending, as is his love for Pippa.

background

Donna Tartt came up with the idea of ​​making the explosion in a museum the starting point of the story in view of the destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan by the Taliban in March 2001. At the center of the subsequently developed plot should initially be another painting, when the author accidentally discovered the goldfinch and researched details about the life of the painter, who himself was killed in an explosion.

Reception through literary criticism

The novel received unanimous praise from American literary critics. Marked Michiko Kakutani him in the New York Times as "beautiful, dickenshafter novel, a novel that combines all their remarkable narrative talent to a rousing symphonic whole, and the reader the full pleasures by reaped nights in memory calls" ( "glorious, Dickensian novel, a novel that pulls together all her remarkable storytelling talents into a rapturous, symphonic whole and reminds the reader of the immersive, stay-up-all-night pleasures of reading ") . Stephen King calls Donna Tartt "a gorgeous storyteller" . Woody Brown writes for Artvoice: “Even if my life depended on it, I couldn't have put the book down. This novel is an extraordinary achievement, devoid of any vanity on the part of the author, as well as everything else except what he claims as a container for truly great literature. " (" I could not put this book down, not even if my life had depended on it . This novel is an extraordinary achievement, one completely bereft of any vanity on the part of the author or anything apart from the demands that truly great fiction makes on its vessel. ")

There is similar enthusiasm in German-language literary criticism: Felicitas von Lovenberg describes the novel in the FAZ as a “masterpiece”. Ilka Piepgras wrote in the time that Donna Tartt wrote “books that seem so true that the protagonists accompany the reader far beyond the reading process . ”In the taz it is said that Donna Tartt interweaves“ with great mastery the emotional odyssey of her protagonist, psychological questions and moral discussion of values ​​”. Gracy Olmstead, however, was very annoyed by the flat drawing of the character Theo, who remains completely passive for almost the entire plot and, apart from the shock and grief over the loss of his mother and the quiet infatuation with Pippa, shows almost no deeper emotions .

The femundo portal praised the successful audio book interpretation by Matthias Koeberlin .

success

The novel was named the best book of the year by Amazon in 2013 . 2014 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the field Fiction Award and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction nominee.

By June 2014, over 1.5 million copies had been sold in the United States. The film rights were purchased from Warner Bros. acquired.

filming

2018/19 the novel by director was John Crowley filmed with Ansel Elgort , Aneurin Barnard , Ashleigh Cummings , Jeffrey Wright and Nicole Kidman in the lead roles. It was released in theaters in autumn 2019.

expenditure

English original edition

  • The Goldfinch . Little Brown and Company, 2013, ISBN 978-0-316-25882-1 (Hardcover).
  • The Goldfinch . Little, Brown & Company, 2013 (audio CDs, unabridged, speaker: David Pittu ; Audie Awards in the categories Best Literary Fiction Audiobook and Best Male Solo Performance , 2014).

German editions

  • The goldfinch . Goldmann, 2014, ISBN 978-3-442-31239-9 (hardcover).
  • The goldfinch . der Hörverlag, 2014 (audio book / download, unabridged, speaker: Matthias Koeberlin ).
    • The goldfinch . der Hörverlag, 2015 (audio book / MP3-CD, unabridged, speaker: Matthias Koeberlin).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ It rivals the greatest painters. FAZ of February 22, 2014.
  2. ↑ Nobody can get out of here alive. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 30, 2014.
  3. ↑ The Independent. In: Die Zeit of March 27, 2014.
  4. ↑ A Painting as Talisman, as Enduring as Loved Ones Are Not. NYT October 7, 2013.
  5. ↑ Stephen King slams 'Twilight' as 'tweenager porn'. NY Daily News September 21, 2013.
  6. ↑ To Have Loved a Beautiful Thing. ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Artvoice from February 20, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / artvoice.com
  7. ↑ To horror, to delight. In: FAZ of March 7, 2014.
  8. ↑ The Independent. In: Die Zeit of March 27, 2014.
  9. ↑ God's sense of black humor. taz from April 6, 2014.
  10. ↑ Gray Olmstead: Why Does Everyone Love “The Goldfinch”? In Acculturated , June 20, 2015, accessed December 25, 2015.
  11. ↑ The story lives and breathes. femundo.de, April 13, 2018, accessed on May 12, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Best Books of 2013 overview at amazon.com
  13. ↑ 2014 Winners and Finalists list of 2014 winners on pulitzer.org
  14. ^ Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction ( Memento July 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 2014 shortlist
  15. ↑ Husna Haq: Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch' is the newest bestseller to weather backlash. In: csmonitor.com , June 24, 2014, accessed October 5, 2014.
  16. ^ Claire Fallon: Warner Brothers Acquires Movie Rights To Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch'. In: huffingtonpost.com , July 29, 2014, accessed October 5, 2014.
  17. ↑ 'Brooklyn' Helmer John Crowley To Direct Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Novel 'Goldfinch' . In: Deadline , July 20, 2016.