Nick: “We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.” Amy: “I’m the bitch who makes you a man.”

The Goldfinch, named after the 1654 painting by Carel Fabritius of a chained goldfinch, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2013 novel by Donna Tartt and a book club favorite. This article provides a personality perspective that focuses on the relationship between two of the book’s main characters—Theodore “Theo” Decker, who tells the story in retrospective first-person narration, and his boyhood friend, Boris.