Skip to main content

Create an Unofficial Discussion Guide for THE GOLDFINCH

Special Feature

Create an Unofficial Discussion Guide for THE GOLDFINCH

We receive tons of "Request a Guide" notes on a daily basis, but we've noticed that the absolute most popular book you'd like discussion questions for is Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, THE GOLDFINCH. There is currently no official guide available for the 700-plus page-turner, but that doesn't mean we can't come up with our own book group discussion questions. But now, thanks to our brilliant readers, we now have our own unofficial guide, which you can see here.

More about THE GOLDFINCH:
It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

THE GOLDFINCH is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.