In January, 2014 I was trying to read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. All I can remember about the book without looking at my notes is that there is a young boy who somehow is in possession of something important and it all revolves around a piece of art.
But looking back at Goodreads, reading my ‘review’ (I honestly never think of my notes as any kind of review) I remember more.
A thirteen year old boy and his mother are visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a bomb explodes, killing his mother. In the chaos someone directs the boy to steal an important piece of art, titled The Goldfinch.
The story goes on from there, on and on for about 800 pages. My review noted the often beautiful writing but the hopelessness of wading through so many pages of it. I was determined, it says in my review, not to let the book beat me.
And now, after all that, I don’t even remember how it ended.
Today, more than 10 years later, I’m reading Fredrik Backman’s My Friends. Mr. Backman also wrote A Man called Ove which I loved and remember almost every bit of.
I expected to have a similar warm and tearfully emotional experience with this book, but so far I am not having those feelings…and I am struggling to finish it. I’m half way through and I’m determined not to let the book beat me.
The book seems to be two stories, one the story of eighteen year old Louisa who has aged out of the foster system and run away, and the story of four friends, one of whom grew up to be a famous artist, and their story of a summer decades ago, depicted in a very famous, very expensive painting.
Now one of those four friends has run into Louisa on her flight from her old life. He might be running away too. He has with him the ashes of the artist and the painting itself. It happens to be Louisa’s favorite painting, one she came to town to see.
That’s as much as I know at this point. Louisa and the artist’s friend are on a train going somewhere. The friend said the artist wanted Louisa to have the million dollar painting. (The artist and Louisa met briefly in an alley where she was spray painting a mural on the back of a building. He said she was his kind of person.)
It has occurred to me that young people and famous pieces of art might be a theme.
Which reminds me of another book, written by a friend of mine, Karen Mulvahill. Her book, The Lost Woman is the story of Nicole who’s parents were each rounded up by the Nazis during WWII. Nicole’s father owned an art gallery and Nicole worked there as a young woman. After it was taken over by members of the Nazi party she managed to get hired to work there again.
She did that so that she could protect as much art as possible. But at what cost? At the beginning of the story she is an old woman, hiring a man named Robert to find and return some of the art that was stolen.
The book, beautifully written, is the story of Robert and Nicole and how they came to be in the places they find themselves.
So here you have three books and three sets of young people absorbed in art. Three different stories threaded together with images of my winter goldfinches who, of course, have their own stories to tell.
Change Is Hard 