‘Good Thief,’ great book
Cathy Newland, Special to The Gazette
Friday, October 30, 2009
“The Good Thief: A Novel” by Hannah Tinti, Dial Press, 2008, $25.
By Cathy Newland
Special to The Gazette
Imagine this — you are a 12-year-old boy, you are missing your left hand, you live in an orphanage, and the only link to your beginnings is a name tag sewn in the collar of the nightshirt you were wearing when you were abandoned as a baby. You have just learned from someone claiming to be your long-lost brother that he knows your history.
Imagine — how would you feel? What would you think? What would you do? You can’t imagine? Never mind — Hannah Tinti has enough imagination for us all.
Her imagination created Ren and his circumstances and his adventures. Her imagination equipped Ren with a rich imagination. When William, a fellow orphan, is chosen for adoption by a local farmer, Ren imagines a welcoming meal prepared by the farmer’s wife complete with porcelain plates, wildflowers and fresh bread on the table with a blackberry pie cooling on the windowsill.
Contemplating the theft of a horse, he imagines God as a “benignly neglectful gardener,” ultimately weeding sinners from His rose garden. Thinking of miners trapped underground, Ren imagines the roots of an ancient chestnut tree sifting through all things buried — old pots and pans and bits of china, boots, pickaxes — and the miners themselves.
Ren is going to need that fertile imagination along with quick wits and nimble fingers to survive in mid-19th-century New England. Especially because Benjamin Nab, the man claiming to be his brother seems to be leading Ren into a series of misadventures that includes lies, theft and grave robbing. Among the remarkable characters Ren meets along the way are a deaf landlady, a questionable doctor, a resurrected giant and the owner of a mousetrap factory.
The novel resonates with well-developed and interesting characters involved in intriguing, although sometimes unbelievable, situations.
Tinti weaves all these characters, their circumstances and situations into a tale with various themes: good and evil, love and hate, life and death and, first and foremost, family. Suspend your disbelief, go with Ren on his search for family, then let’s talk about it — it is a book that insists on discussion. It is a “work of literary magic,” said Ellen Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love.”
“The Good Thief” is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and a recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award given to books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18. Tinti is also the author of the short story collection “Animal Crackers” and co-founder and editor in chief of One Story, a non-profit literary magazine. Visit Tinti’s website, http://hannahtinti.com/, for a link to book discussion questions and learn where she found the inspiration for the mousetrap factory and other elements of the novel.
• On the Shelf is written by staff and volunteers of the Emporia Public Library.