“The Good Thief,” by Hannah Tinti, 336 pages, sounds like Oliver Twist in colonial New England. A 2009 Alex Award winner.
If you've read this book, please leave a comment about it and whether you think it would be of interest to a wide audience of 30,000 university readers.
3 comments:
The Good Thief had some pretty explicit themes around loss and death - and because I enjoy reading material with these themes, I found it interesting. I did feel, however, that the perspective was confusing - the book was written in the third person from the perspective of a child (Ren) but at times I found myself re-reading because either the perspective seemed too complex to come from Ren, or Ren seemed too old to have the perspective...at any rate, it was a fast read, and I was able to keep pace with the fight scenes (I usually find that I forget who hit whom, etc.) - so interestingly, it was the main character I had a problem identifying with, and I found myself much more interested in the side stories, which really were not explored at all.
Although shorter and more direct in its appraisal of violence, this work is a homage to the style of nineteenth century novels about poor orphan boys, and is set in nineteenth century New England. I'm not sure it will provoke deep and meaningful discussions and think many in the target audience might find it arcane. Here is a brief review I wrote for another site:
An orphan in search of his true identity, desperately yearning for the ideal family life, experiences a series of dramatic and often dark plot turns, replete with incredible coincidences and peopled with a cast of con men, disabled sympathizers, and Victorian stereotypes. You saw it in Oliver Twist, you saw it in Treasure Island, and here is a new take on this recognized formula, although unlike the two classic novels I just mentioned, the omniscient narrator here clearly has a feminine sensibility in assessing our young one-handed hero Ren's struggle: the book emphasizes his ache for a lost mother and father more than it does the Gothic adventures in this tale, riveting though they might be, including grave robbing, a shootout in a mousetrap factory evocative of Melville's "Tartarus of Maids," and a trip up a chimney with a misshapen dwarf.
Ren has a talent for picking up five finger discounts with his one good hand, but he also has a strong moral sense of honor, loyalty, and compassion, which leads to much plot tension when he is taken from the Catholic orphanage of St. Anthony's (patron for finding lost things--like your identity or your relatives) and is thrown into a tough life of struggling for survival among the criminal element. The ending satisfied the formula, as expected, but I found the pacing of this novel uneven--it seemed to move very slowly at first, then rushed pell mell in the closing chapters, trying to pull all the elements together neatly. Nevertheless, my heart went out to Ren. Although some of the secondary characters were not adequately developed in my opinion, I certainly came to care for and worry about this protagonist, admiring his perseverance and his pluck.
although i agree with the other posts about the themes of the book being interesting and somewhat relevant, i found it not as engaging as other books we are considering. also, i found the prose sometimes hard to follow, with a stilted flow. it would not be my top recommendation for the reading program.
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