THE Goldfinch was one of a few paintings by a Dutch master, a pupil of Rembrandt, to survive an explosion in Delft that killed the artist.

At the start of Tartt’s novel, over 350 years later, the painting survives a second explosion, in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It is rescued (well, taken) from a dust-storm of collapsing rubble by 13-year-old Theo, who was visiting the museum with his mother.

She was killed in the blast, and the painting becomes a powerful force in Theo’s life – a dangerous secret and the key to his survival. The stolen, unearned treasure acts as a metaphor for the survivor’s guilt and becomes a commodity for criminals who use it as collateral.

The book moves from the smart parts of New York to the edge of Las Vegas, where, unsupervised by his gambling addict father, life is a rollercoaster ride not so much fuelled by drugs, as crazed, anaesthetised and trashed by them. But the book’s real heart is the Dickensian furniture restoration workshop of Hobie, Theo’s saviour and moral touchstone.

Tartt’s writing is sumptuous and multi-layered (prompting comparisons with Proust); the bomb in the Met is a virtuoso passage, evoking the sensory and mental confusion of a survivor, and providing a catalyst that reverberates devastatingly through his life.

Donna Tartt is...

  • American, born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and is a graduate of Bennington College.
  • She is reported to have been a close friend of American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis at college.
  • She is not prolific; this new novel follows 11 years after her second book The Little Friend, which was published in 2002, and 21 years after her acclaimed first novel The Secret History, published in 1992.
  • Millions of copies of her books have been sold around the world and translated into 24 languages