It's big and it's beautiful. At close to 800 pages one might think The Goldfinch would be a tough read, but the characters are so intriguing and the plot so moving that you'll forget the length. A handful of seniors in last year’s Contemporary Authors class chose this book and were delighted. At the heart of this book is Theo, a teenage boy whose world is knocked asunder when his mother is killed. We know this from the first sentence and then we watch him navigate the perils of his life, moving from a wealthy friend’s family in New York to his father’s place in Las Vegas, back to New York and even on to Amersterdam. The title of the book comes from the small painting that Theo grabs from the museum after the explosion that killed his mother. This painting is the one thing that remains as a connection to his mother and the key to his world shifting from one scene to the next. The novel was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and The New York Times Book Review states: "The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind…”