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The Good Thief
On sale
19th March 2009
Price: £7.99
Set in the wild, seamy and extremely strange America of the nineteenth century: a historical novel so richly involving and so touching that you never want it to end.
Young Ren is missing his parents and a hand and doesn’t know what happened to any of them. So he is beginning to fear that he will never be claimed from his cold New England orphanage: that his dream of a family – of a life – will come to nothing.
But one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the orphanage. To Ren’s astonishment, the charming Benjamin Nab says he is his brother, come to bring him home. And even when his stories grow more and more extraordinary, when he puts Ren’s life in danger again and again and sets him first to theft and then to grave-robbing, Ren cannot quite abandon hope. That one day all the hunger and danger and unwanted excitement will be worth it, that he will find a family. But whether Benjamin is to be trusted is another story…
Young Ren is missing his parents and a hand and doesn’t know what happened to any of them. So he is beginning to fear that he will never be claimed from his cold New England orphanage: that his dream of a family – of a life – will come to nothing.
But one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the orphanage. To Ren’s astonishment, the charming Benjamin Nab says he is his brother, come to bring him home. And even when his stories grow more and more extraordinary, when he puts Ren’s life in danger again and again and sets him first to theft and then to grave-robbing, Ren cannot quite abandon hope. That one day all the hunger and danger and unwanted excitement will be worth it, that he will find a family. But whether Benjamin is to be trusted is another story…
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Reviews
'Every once in a while - if you are very lucky - you come upon a novel so marvelous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it, as well. The Good Thief is just such a book - a beautifully composed work of literary magic. That masterpieces don't come along very often only makes it more wonderful to experience'
'A confident whirl of a read, with pathos and drama nicely juxtaposed'
'Every once in a while - if you are very lucky - you come upon a novel so marvelous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it, as well. The Good Thief is just such a book'
'A sensitive tale, beautifully told'
'It may be too quaint to imagine there are still families reading aloud together at night (so many Web sites, so little time), but if you're out there, consider Hannah Tinti's charming first novel. Set in the dark woods of 19th-century New England, The Good Thief follows a bright, one-handed orphan through enough harrowing scrapes and turns to satisfy your inner Dickens'
'Tinti has written a lightening strike of a novel - beautiful and haunting and ever so bright. She is a twenty-first-century Robert Louis Stevenson'
'Tinti is lavish with her storytelling gifts, which are prodigious'
'Tinti ...has created one of the freshest, most beguiling narratives this side of Oliver Twist...Ren... is a child for our own time: loving, wary and ravenously hungry for home'
'[a] moody, twist and assured first novel.... Tinti secures her place as one of the sharpest, slyest young American novelists'
'Reminds you why you fell in love with reading in the first place'
'Much-trumpeted debut novel featuring Ren, a one-handed orphan in 19th-Century New England. When rugged stranger Benjamin Nab takes charge of the lad, claiming to be his brother, Ren is soon left wondering just where the truth lies ****'
Orphan Ren has no idea where his parents or one of his hands went. But when Benjamin Nab turns up claiming to be his brother, his life goes from dull to dodgy - thieving and grave robbing are just some if Ben's plans for Ren'
'Hannah Tinti has written a lightning strike of a novel--beautiful and haunting and ever so bright. She is a 21st century Robert Louis Stevenson, an adventuress who lays bare her character's hearts with a precision and a fearlessness that will leave you shaken'
'A wonderful historical adventure strongly influenced by Poe, Dickens, and Patricia Highsmith. An excellent debut novel'
'a beautiful novel, a dazzling debut'
'A touching story you won't want to end'
'Tinti is a writer of considerable skill... The Good Thief is enjoyable. Its characters hover for a long time after the book is finished, not in the terrifying way of the aforementioned authors' but in a way that challenges our notions of good and evil. Ren's struggle to stay good when surrounded by bad men offers one of life's great conundrums: which way might any of us fall? Perhaps the greatest fears rest in a question such as that'
Every once in a while - if you are very lucky - you come upon a novel so marvelous and enchanting and rare that you wish everyone in the world would read it, as well. The Good Thief is just such a book - a beautifully composed work of literary magic. That masterpieces don't come along very often only makes it more wonderful to experience
A confident whirl of a read, with pathos and drama nicely juxtaposed
A sensitive tale, beautifully told
It may be too quaint to imagine there are still families reading aloud together at night (so many Web sites, so little time), but if you're out there, consider Hannah Tinti's charming first novel. Set in the dark woods of 19th-century New England, The Good Thief follows a bright, one-handed orphan through enough harrowing scrapes and turns to satisfy your inner Dickens
Tinti is lavish with her storytelling gifts, which are prodigious
[A] moody, twist and assured first novel.... Tinti secures her place as one of the sharpest, slyest young American novelists
Much-trumpeted debut novel featuring Ren, a one-handed orphan in 19th-Century New England. When rugged stranger Benjamin Nab takes charge of the lad, claiming to be his brother, Ren is soon left wondering just where the truth lies
A wonderful historical adventure strongly influenced by Poe, Dickens, and Patricia Highsmith. An excellent debut novel
A beautiful novel, a dazzling debut