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Welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of the Goldfinch.

Donna Tart's big, big novel about a stolen painting, a bombing at the Met, an orphan teen,

furniture restoration, Las Vegas.

It's about everything in the world.

I'm Dan Coise.

I'm the editor of the Slate Book Review, and I am here in Slate's DC Recording Studio with Hata Rosen. Hello, Hanna. Hi, Dan. And joining us from New York is Slate Culture Critic, Megan O'Rourke. Hey, Megan. Hey, Dan. There's always the case in the audiobook club. We will be spoiling plot details. So if you are a person who cares about that, press pause, go read the

book. It will take you a few minutes, then come back and listen to the rest of the podcast. But if

you don't care, then just listen to us. And there is a lot of plot to spoil. There's tons of

plot, so much plot. And one of the things I want to talk about in this conversation is whether

there's too much plot, as James Wood of the New Yorker seems to think, or if there's maybe even not enough plot, I can't imagine who would think that. That was just a rhetorical advice I said. Seems impossible. But so with a book this big and this sprawling and this eventful, maybe sort of the way to get into it is to sort of talk

our way through it. There's so much to talk about and so much that I'm sure each of you wants

to bring to it that maybe just a good way to start is with the setup, which is we have Theo

Decker, who is a 13-year-old living in New York with his single mom. The dad is out of the

picture.

He disappeared like a year ago.

Theo has been suspended from school, and they're about to go to a meeting with a principal.

But before the meeting, he and his mom go to the Met.

...