Theo Decker loses his mother to a bomb explosion during a visit to NYC art museum. Theo survives, but at the behest of a dying old man he steals a small but hugely important painting, The Goldfinch. His mother's death and this theft shapes and moves Theo's life as he is shuttled around adult caretakers and into his adult life.

Gloriously written, with imagery and sentences that are simply glowing, Donna Tartt subsumes you into Theo's life with each page. While this books starts with a bomb blast, the remaining 800+ pages ebb and flow with events, like the tide. Theo is not always a likeable person, and his drug habits are simply enormous, but his life, and the people in his life are so well drawn you simply lose yourself in the story.

All I really have to say is wait until you meet Boris. He is one of the best characters in modern literature I have ever met. I held my breath whenever he was absent from the narrative, and smiled with glee each time he returned.