SABBATH SNAPSHOT : "personal partiali-TEA"

---Yes, I have read The Goldfinch. I read it last year before going to spend a weekend in Greenwood, Ms, birthplace of the author, Donna Tartt.

Yes, I know it won the Pulitzer Prize BUT as well-written as it was, I would not recommend it because much of it was too dark for me. The thread that ran through the book concerning the young boy's possession of Fabritius' painting of "The Goldfinch" was intriguing BUT the family DYSFUNCTION (in all caps) that Theo experienced (especially in Las Vegas with his dad and dad's girlfriend) was so raw that it jarred my sensibilities and overshadowed all the rest for me. Harshness and depravity. I'm not partial to those characteristics in my reading.
Emotional abandonment of children, in life or in literature, is not my cup of tea. 

Tartt's writing did hook me at first, i.e. Theo's description of the painting & it's reminder of  his mother.

It was a direct and matter-of-fact little creature, with nothing sentimental about it; and something about the neat, compact way it tucked down inside itself—its brightness, its alert watchful expression—made me think of pictures I’d seen of my mother when she was small: a dark-capped finch with steady eyes.

BTW, the painting itself was housed (on loan from Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague) at the Frick Collection, my favorite NYC museum, until January. I hate I missed it and Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring."
The museum I would recommend, but not the book. That's just my partiali-TEA to "gentle reads" and this was not a "gentle" book.

---Want a gentler read that deals with art---Try Harriet Scott Chessman's,  Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper. In story form, with chapters divided by the pictures for which Lydia posed, you will meet the contemporaries of her sister, the artist, Mary Cassatt, including Edgar Degas, "his eyes heavy lidded, like a lizard's in the sun." (p.52) It's a short easy read....

and includes a Cassatt painting of "The Cup of Tea." Lydia, her sister's model, is ailing & often wonders how her sister sees her beyond her malady. (Bright's disease)
Looking at herself in the painting, Lydia's thinks as she speaks to said girl, "Look at me." I long to say to her. "Tell me what you are thinking as you sip your cup of tea."

Maybe my partiali-TEA to tea and this American born grand dame of impressionism led me to this book, but the story held me there. A gentle read set in Paris in the late 1800s.  A story that resonated with the profoundly moving relationship of two sisters, told from the point of view of the non-famous one. Endearing, not sappy.