First impressions of The Goldfinch

Just a very few pages into Donna Tartt's new and very long novel, The Goldfinch, but a few first impressions: comparing this with her first novel, a great novel I thought, The Secret History, I'm struck by her ability to get "the bone in the throat" right away: that one began as a confessional, with words something like "this is the only story I will ever tell." This one begins with a 27-year-old man on the run, hiding in Amsterdam, looking for reference to his "crime" in the newspapers (which he can't really read) - we have no idea who he is or what he's done, but who wouldn't want to read further? Also noting that once again (I did not read her second and largely unsuccessful novel) she is writing through a male narrator - that may not be unique, but it's pretty unusual, especially for a contemporary writer. Third, the narrator "flashes back" to a pivotal event in his life, the day his mother died - for which he bears some guilt, we're not yet sure why, but we know that she took off from work that day to accompany him, then 14 years old, to his NYC prep school from which he's just been suspended - again, we don't know exactly why, nor, yet, how his mother died and what the connection is, if any, to the crime for which he's on the run. The relationship to the mother - just the two of them, no other sibs, father out of the picture - with her oft-described beauty and independence - reminds me of Tobias Wolff and also of Richard Ford, at least in his Montana novel Wildfire (I think that was its title). Not all have weighed in favorably on The Goldfinch, but I would say that, at the least, it starts very well - smart, thoughtful, well-paced