…”The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt. It’s a big, sprawling, novel, NYC, Vegas, Amsterdam, romance, tragedy, murder, art theft, drugs, and sinister Russians. Personally, I could have done with less Las Vegas, but the plot and the characters, especially the central one, the narrator, and his predicament(s) kept me turning the pages. As for the High-ness of the “Art,” there was a lot more awareness and description of light than I think a teenage boy would be inclined toward and seemed the author striving to add a layer of luster of her own devising, but the prose was well-styled and toward the end the thought became resonant and eloquent.
But, again, at 73, I again found myself, “thought-wise,” pretty well stocked. Maybe if I was an adolescent or young man or even Tartt’s age, forty-ish when she wrote this… But in my present, the what-will-happen-next was the main thing.