We'll Spare You the 784 Pages and Tell You Exactly What Happens in The Goldfinch

It’s been a long time coming, but The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about a boy who steals the priceless Carel Fabritius painting “The Goldfinch” from the Metropolitan Museum of Art — is finally coming to the big screen. John Crowley will direct, with Sarah Paulson playing Xandra, Ansel Elgort playing Theo, and Willa Fitzgerald, Finn Wolfhard, Nicole Kidman, and Ashleigh Cummings also appearing. Though you still have plenty of time to read the book before it hits theaters on Sept. 13 this year, we totally understand if you can’t fit the 784-page tome into your busy schedule. If short books are more your thing, here’s everything you need to know about Tartt’s legendary novel.

The novel is told from the perspective of Theodore “Theo” Decker, a 13-year-old living with his beloved mother in New York City. His story starts off with a bang (literally), when he and his mom visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see an exhibition of Dutch masterpieces and find themselves victims of a bomb explosion. Theo’s mom is killed, along with several other visitors, though Theo is miraculously only wounded. While navigating the rubble, he finds an old man whom he’d noticed earlier (because of the cute red-haired girl with him) and the man, Welty, gives Theo a ring and asks that he deliver it to his partner, Hobie. Welty also points to the wall, and Theo, panicked and believing that the old man is pointing at the famed Carel Fabritius painting “The Goldfinch,” takes it from the wall and runs.

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