We follow Theo over 14 years, from his dazed recovery in New York to Las Vegas, where he joins his gambler father, and befriends Boris, a druggy street kid from Ukraine back to New York as an adult where he becomes a partner in an antiques business and finally to a violent confrontation with the criminal underworld in Amsterdam. Why risk spoiling a reader’s encounter with the shock and ambition of Tartt’s metaphysical thriller? Suffice it to say that her hero, 13-year-old Theo Decker, survives a terrible accident in which his adored mother dies, and he forms a profound attachment to a celebrated (and real) small painting of a goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt’s most gifted student, who died in 1654, the year he painted it. I don’t like to give away the ending of a novel, but in the case of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, I don’t want to reveal details of the beginning.

Saint Peter and the Goldfinch is the work of a talented and seasoned poet, one whose work comes out of the 'plainspoken' tradition-the kind of poetry that, as Thomas Lynch puts it, 'has to deliver the goods, has to say something about life, something clear and discernible, or it has little to offer.' Readers of poetry who enjoy wrestling with life’s big questions will appreciate the space that Ridl allows for these ruminations.The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown, £20) The first section of Saint Peter and the Goldfinch reflects on the author’s personal history, with poems like 'Feeding the Pup in the Early Morning' and 'Some of What Was Left After Therapy.' The second section continues with meditations on varied events and persons and includes poems such as 'The Last Days of Sam Snead' and 'Coffee Talks with Con Hilberry.' The third attends primarily to the mystery of love and what one loves and contains the poems 'The Inevitable Sorrow of Potatoes' and 'Suite for the Long Married.' The fourth and final section meditates primarily on the imagined in poems like 'Over in That Corner, the Puppets' and 'Meditation on a Photograph of a Man Jumping a Puddle in the Rain.' All these characteristics can be found in this book, and there is something else, something extraordinary: at an age where most poets are content to roll out an imagined posterity, he’s decided to push and refine the art, to see out the day and live it fully, because art and life settle for no less.' An early reader of Saint Peter and the Goldfinch said it best: 'Ridl’s books are all treasures, as is he, and his poetry has always been trout-quick, alternately funny and wondrous, instantly intimate, and free of pretense. Jack Ridl returns with a collection of poems that mix deft artistic skill with intimate meditations on everyday life, whether that be curiosity, loss, discovery, joy, or the passing of the seasons.

The goldfinch book free