Dolly, a "new man" risen from the grave, who is completely unapologetic about his murderousness ("I was made for it" as he tells Ren), but inexplicably decides that he and Ren should be BFFs. Sands, who is hard of hearing and thus even her "whispers" are shouts, but who turns into the mother figure of the book. I also thought the plot was pretty straightforward, with a linear resolution that was logical but never went anywhere really unexpected.Īlso, too many relationships seemed sketched in in a manner that expected the reader to take them for granted, with characters who are entertaining and colorful but mostly for a handful of memorable traits that substitute for character development. I can't quite give it the label "great" though - it's a debut novel and much better than a lot of debut novels I've read, but a few things kept it in the "good" category and out of the "great."įirst, the writing, while superior to the formulaic 8th grade prose targeted at a lowest-common-denominator YA audience, isn't developed enough to really elevate this to literary excellence. Now with all that literary foundation, you'd think this would be a great book. That plus the explicit violence makes this a darker tale than most of those 19th century classics, but it still delivers the expected resolution with revelations about hidden relations and the protagonist finding a family of sorts. Nab, it turns out, has plans for Ren, mostly involving thieving, conning, and a bit of gravedigging. Anthony's home for boys until he is adopted by a rogue named Benjamin Nab, with a wild story of his long-lost brother. It's about an orphan named Ren, missing a hand, and thus nearly unadoptable, who grows up in the St. Hannah Tinti adds a bit of Melville and Hawthorne Americana to the mix, with a side of Stephen King New England creepiness. The Good Thief is reminiscent of classic adventure tales about plucky orphans like Kim, Treasure Island, and Oliver Twist. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world.īut then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren’s long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony’s Orphanage for boys. Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand.
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