Our book club meeting in Chicago turned into a two-hour fight about 'The Goldfinch'

Last Tuesday, our group of eight met at the library on Oak Street to discuss Donna Tartt's book. Half of us, led by my friend Sarah, felt the ending was a beautiful, messy look at life, while the other half thought it was a total cop-out that ruined the whole story. It got so heated we almost forgot to pick the next book. Has your club ever had a split this deep over how a book should end?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_park21d ago

Yeah "him finally seeing a way forward" nails it. My own club had the same split over "A Little Life" - half of us felt the ending was just too much misery for misery's sake.

taylor_young1mo ago

You said it "wasn't a neat bow" but that's the problem. After 700 pages of this guy's terrible life, you need SOME kind of payoff. Him just walking away and the book ending with a vague thought about goodness feels lazy. It's like Tartt wrote herself into a corner and didn't know how to finish it. All that build up with the painting and the crime just fizzles out. A real life can be messy, but a story still needs to feel like it ended on purpose.

taylor_young1mo ago

Honestly, I'm with Sarah's group. That ending felt real because life doesn't wrap up clean. Theo's whole life was a mess of grief and bad choices, so him just walking away from the painting and that last line about "goodness" actually hit hard. It wasn't a neat bow, it was him finally seeing a way forward. Calling it a cop-out misses how the whole book built to that moment of letting go.