Twee weken voor verschijning van de nieuwe roman van Donna Tartt in de VS is de eerste grote bespreking verschenen in The New York Times. Recensente Michiko Kakutani schrijft over Het puttertje / The Goldfinch:

‘Ms. Tartt has made Fabritius’s bird the MacGuffin at the center of her glorious, Dickensian novel, a novel that pulls together all her remarkable storytelling talents into a rapturous, symphonic whole and reminds the reader of the immersive, stay-up-all-night pleasures of reading. … But it’s not just narrative suspense that drives this book; it’s Theo and Boris, the stars of this enthralling novel, who will assume seats in the great pantheon of classic buddy acts (alongside Laurel and Hardy, Vladimir and Estragon, and Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon), taking up permanent residence in the reader’s mind.’
Lees de gehele bespreking.

Ook Vanity Fair recenseerde de roman:
‘The Goldfinch is a book about art in all its forms, and right from the start we remember why we enjoy Donna Tartt so much: the humming plot and elegant prose; the living, breathing characters; the perfectly captured settings….Joy and sorrow exist in the same breath, and by the end The Goldfinch hangs in our stolen heart. Throughout these near 800 pages, we are reminded again and again of Donna Tartt’s deep intelligence, for this is a bildungsroman that is intimately aware of its bildungsroman pedigree…..As one character says of Fabritius and his special little bird, ‘There’s a doubleness. You see the mark, you see the paint for the paint, and also the living bird.’ The next moment, he marvels at the physical weight of the painting’s wooden board, its surprising heft. The same holds true for The Goldfinch.’

The Goldfinch verschijnt in de VS op 22 oktober a.s. De Nederlandse vertaling verscheen op 23 september jl. Nederland had daarmee de wereldprimeur.