So without realising it, it pays to slow down to smell the roses, as it were, and let Theo teach us something about what’s in front of us. The author’s descriptions of nature, art, music, and people are thought- provoking. The cellist is the most captivating and its a bonus that Theo is a classical music aficionado.
Theo’s intention to bestow gifts personally is sweet and a little dangerous, all at the same time. The characters Theo interacts with make the story rich– a sick child, a homeless woman on a bicycle, a humming janitor, a wife who longs to be a mom, a cello student, a street musician, a bookstore owner, an artist. Theo becomes the thread that binds them together. Who Theo is and why he is in GOLDEN is a mystery that keeps me turning the pages till the end. Interestingly, what stayed with me long after I finished the book was the gift of beauty, “good sadness” and forgiveness.
Anyone who enjoys people watching will find this book easy to fall in love with. Imagine if you actually stopped to talk to the people you are watching at the airport or the mall, you’d be captivated, I’m sure, by their stories.
I would recommend this book to anyone who needs to slow down. THEO OF GOLDEN is a beautiful story of an elderly man who moves to Golden, Georgia from New York City. When first arriving, he comes across a coffee shop that has portraits on its walls to which he is drawn by the skill of the artist and the depth of how well he captures each subject. He proceeds to buy them and gift them to the subject of the portraits in deeply meaningful and impactful meetings.
Everyone carries sadness, pain, discouragement, and emotional wounds and for Theo in gifting the portraits to each of the subjects, he’s able to see through the mistakes and heaviness in their soul, without judgement. What a gift of being truly seen and heard, goes far beyond a portrait.
Theo doesn’t seek recognition or attention, while skilfully redirecting questions about himself so the focus stays on the other person. We learn bits and pieces of Theo’s backstory throughout the book and gather he was a successful entrepreneur with worldly connections, having grown up in Portugal and lived in many locations whilst shouldering lots of sadness and pain. While the story is purposeful with multiple layers, there is purity of enjoyment throughout its pages.
When one finishes the story, you feel like Allen Levi is a friend. The story is so beautiful that one longs for it to be real. His decisions to live small made him larger than life. It’s a very spiritual essence, part Christian motto and part Torah lore.
The ideas of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, are universal tenets that make THEO OF GOLDEN a beautifully crafted work, a novel about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder and living a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.
