The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.78 You Save: $21.22 (85%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Good Thief
Book Review: Don't judge a book by its cover
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This book does an excellent job of turning the idea of what's "good" on its ear - the main question I sensed posed by the author as I finished the book was, "If you do something bad, is there no good in you, then?"
At the beginning of the book, I decided right away that I liked Ren - not because he only had one hand, but because he has spunk and I could relate to his feelings of wanting something better, yet being afraid to leave what was comfortable and familiar. When Benjamin takes Ren away from the orphanage, I did not like Benjamin's casual, almost mean attitude - he seemed to be to be a tad cruel in some of the things he does (for one example, he allows his best friend, Tom, a former schoolteacher, to force Ren to sell his prized - and only - possession, a book). I didn't like Tom at the beginning, either - he was as mean as Benjamin, and both lived a life of thievery, trickery, and dishonesty.
Ren, of course, is pulled into this life, and adapts. But as he does "bad" things, his heart remains "good," and while he wants to please Benjamin, he still stands up for what he believes is right (he takes some ill-gotten money to pay for a doctor's care for their landlady - a "heroine" who, ironically, is not described as a gorgeous piece of perfection with a halo, but with flaws and quirks that make the reader love her all the more - and her brother won me over almost instantly - what unique, fascinating characters - he's a dwarf who lives on his sister's roof)!
About halfway through we meet Dolly, a murderer. Again, I didn't immediately take to the guy. But as with the other "villains," by the end of the book I liked and felt protective of them all - the beginning-of-the-story villains run up against true evil and in their pursuit to protect their friends and do the right thing, their true colors illuminate the end-of-the-story heroes living inside the villains. I really liked how the story led me through the growth of the characters and reminded me that you can't assume someone is "bad" because he or she made a mistake or does something "bad" - who knows what that person has been through, what leads a person to do something, and what ultimately rests in that person's heart?
Book Review: Enjoyable, feel-good fiction
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
What a charming book! Tinti may not have created an American masterpiece with this novel, but she certainly has written an enjoyable tale that can be enjoyed by both adults and younger readers.
Ren is a surprisingly captivating hero. A one-handed orphan abandoned as an infant at a Roman Catholic monastery (an anomaly in this largely Protestant New England), Ren grows up wishing for a soft, gentle mother who will fix him hearty meals and tuck him in to bed. What he gets is a grifter who poses as his older brother in order to adopt him, for a price, from the orphanage. When Benjamin Nab shows up with outrageous, wonderful tales of Ren's parents, Ren isn't sure if his dream of a family has come true or if he has landed in a nightmare. Ren, Benjamin, and Tom, an ex-teacher and tortured alcoholic, form a family of sorts, all the while scheming up the next plan to con some money out of the locals.
What Benjamin doesn't know is that Ren has always been a thief. Ren feels compelled to take certain objects (a book about the saints, a colorful stone), and he manages to fit right in with Benjamin and Tom. Their adventures bring them face-to-face with a man risen from the dead, a gangster-type mousetrap tycoon, a mysterious but tough harelip girl, a rooftop dwelling dwarf, a mostly deaf landlady, a quack of a dentist, and a doctor who will pay top dollar for the next corpse.
I couldn't help but cheer for Ren, and all through the story I wanted things to work out for him. It is this quality that I think makes Tinti's predictable story so charming and captivating. Ren is such a likeable character and his truer qualities of honesty and goodness come out once he is away from the monks and thrown in with thieves and murderers. Just like Dismas, Ren is hopeful and penitent and ultimately deserving of salvation.
There are elements of Dickens and Twain here, so the comparisons are probably inevitable. But this is a story that stands by itself. This is a charming, witty, and enjoyable book, and I would definitely recommend it to other readers.
Book Review: A unique take on things...
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Imagine that Charles Dickens and Gabriel García Márquez sat down together to write a novel. Dickens would provide the theme and context: lost orphans looking for their identity in a 19th-century world of crooks, swindlers and even murderers. Márquez would bring to the table his affinity for magic realism and as Dickens told the story, he would stretch it and expand the limits of reality until the reader feels himself entering into the arena of myth and fable, where giants and dwarfs reside.
Hannah Tinti has created such a tale and I have to admit that I rarely come across a novel like this that drives me to finish it so quickly. The characters are both real and unbelievable and some of the images of this novel seem so exaggerated that they almost reach the level of hyperbole of the classic "Gargantua and Pantagruel" by Rabelais. For me, however, this was never off-putting, just simply fascinating. This is a story that seems so alive to me in detail and movement. Reading it, in fact, is a true ride. HANG ON TIGHT!
Despite some gruesome and gory details, the novel is free from overly- explicit passages that often diminish contemporary novels in artistic value. I greatly appreciated this.
I don't love the title. It doesn't capture the imaginative spin on this tale of orphans. And, isn't there already a novel called this? No matter what the title, it's a very interesting book.
Ren, the young protagonist, obtains a book and the narrator tells us how this book absorbs him. Ren's reaction to the novel he reads is remarkably similiar to how I felt reading this book:
"At times he felt like he was reading fragments of his own dreams,reassembled into words that pulled at his heart, as if there were a string tied somewhere inside his chest that ran down into the book and attached itself to the characters, drawing him through the pages." (p. 72)
A great read and highly recommended!
Book Review: Read it as if it were a movie
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The Good Thief is recommended with a bit of reservation.
This novel centers on Ren, an orphan of about 11 years old, in 19th century America. Ren is a likable hero in that he's not annoying or overly talkative. He acts his age rather than unnaturally precocious and I found that rather refreshing.
He is plucked out of the orphanage by a young man named Benjamin Nab. Benjamin is a con artist of sorts (that we know for certain) who might be Ren's real brother (or not). As Ren travels with him, neither he nor the audience knows for certain if Benji is on the up and up about that or just playing a story because let me tell you, Benji tells a damn good story. As the adventure unfolds, Ren begins to wonder exactly what is going on as they encounter new people, acquire stolen goods, and basically do things that the Brother Joseph at the orphanage would disapprove of, Ren gets closer and closer to the truth about Benjamin Nab and himself.
The story is an engaging one. The writing is very good. In fact, it is so good that the reader feels obligated to note that the prose recalls classic adventure stories such as Kidnapped! and Oliver Twist.
That said, I found myself distracted when reading the story as it seemed to have a bit too much detail on things that I didn't feel was important. I wanted more interaction with Ren and Benjamin but instead I'd get paragraph upon paragraph of description of why Ren needed to kiss a horse. I mean, it was a very cute scene but it wasn't quite what I wanted.
Then I realized that if the story is read as if imagining it as a movie, then the story becomes a much smoother read.
And to be honest, if the reader gets to those last few chapters, the reveal is well worth the patience that it took to get there.
Book Review: A missing hand and a missing family
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The only home Ren ever knew was the orphanage at Saint Anthony's. He dreamed of belonging to a family and having a mother to care for him and a father to teach him. Occasionally, a farmer would come and take one of the boys home with him. If a boy never got picked up like this he'd end up with a far worse fate: being sent into the army. And that seems to be Ren's fate, because no one will take a boy who is missing his left hand. Until one day, a mysterious stranger appears claiming to be a long lost relative, and takes him away from the orphanage. But Ren quickly finds himself enlisted into Benjamin Nab's crafty schemes of theft and grave digging and lies. It's not the family he dreamed of, but it's a family, and maybe that's enough.
With similarities to Dickens' "Oliver Twist," this is often a depressing story to read with plenty of pain and misery. The troubles that follow Ren seem almost insurmountable, but Ren never forgets the morals instilled in him by the Catholic priests, in spite of his new role as a thief. Ms. Tinti has an enviable skill of crafting a spell-binding story that tugs at your emotions. The writing is eloquent and makes it a hard book to put down. Although the characters are somewhat two-dimensional and the detail is sometimes muted, it's still a compelling story, and you can't help but wishing for a happy ending for Ren. The cast of characters is colorful and entertaining - I especially liked Dolly and Mrs. Sands - and the descriptive names given to many of the characters, such as the Hat Boys and the Harelip and the Mousetrap Girls, gave a child-like perspective to the tale. His loyalty to his friends and his simple will to keep going in spite of so much hardship is inspiring. He may not be a perfect boy, but he does the best he can to keep his head above water.