I am writing this review now almost six months since I finally put down The Goldfinch. As many before me have said, it is a labor. Apparently for only a few of us a labor of love. Yes there is deep sadness and lostness to The Goldfinch. Yes, it lacks the traditional sparks of human greatness and heroics that make so much fiction easier to swallow and then go about our day.

Instead, Donna Tartt's re-emergence reminds us that the world is rarely so simple and that the common logic of our day is drawing us like (in her words) an unholy flame toward those things which do not make us but destroy us.

Deftly and gently we are reminded of the simple idolatries of our lives, where they find their seeds, and how unlike idolatries they really seem. Theo, our main character, is not so simply the product of an absentee father or of great tragedy or the poor decision-making of youth. He is a man/boy who is fighting the course of his deep, distrustful heart. A heart that is, as the ancient's have said, "deceitful above all things, who can know it?"

In an age where self-acceptance and self-expression are the highest values, how can we not feel broken and cracked in the best way by the story of Theo Decker, a boy who followed his heart and trusted himself, only to the direst and saddest of consequences?

I find I see Theo every day. Among the men who wear suits. The women who blog about their babies. The colleagues and friends of all stripes. We have all wrapped and locked away our Goldfinch and are running life to protect it, recreate it, bring the beauty of it off the canvas and into real life.

Not since Orson Welles exposed our heartfelt lostness and obsessions in Citizen Kane have we been so shown bare for who we really are. And we must ask the twisted conventional wisdom: Were we really born this way?