Overview
Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist,The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents. Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. 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. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world. But 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. 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. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he's lost once again. 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. From the Hardcover edition.
Hannah Tinti is a writer, editor, and a teacher. She grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. She has worked at bookstores, magazines, publishing houses, and literary agencies. In 2002 She co-founded the award-winning magazine "One Story". She was Editor in Chief for 14 years and is an Executive Editor. In 2009 she received the Pen/Nora Magid Award for excellence in editing. In 2011 she joined the the Public Radio Program, "Selected Shorts" as their Literary Commentator. She is also a teacher of creative writing. She taught writing at the New York University Graduate Creative Writing program as well as Columbia University's MFA program and at the Museum of Natural History. Hannah co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference in Italy. Hannah's short story collection, "Animal Crackers" was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her best-selling novel "The Good Thief" is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association's Alex Award, winner of The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award. Her new Novel "The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley" was published in March 2017.
Professional 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." Elizabeth Gilbert, author ofEat, Pray, Love
"Darkly transporting ... [In]The Good Thief, the reader can find plain-spoken fiction full of traditional virtues: strong plotting, pure lucidity, visceral momentum and a total absence of writerly mannerisms. In Ms. Tinti's case that means an American Dickensian tale with touches of Harry Potterish whimsy, along with a macabre streak of spooky New England history." New York Times
"Tinti, like John Barth with his postmodern picturesque classic,The Sot-Weed Factor, has created one of the freshest, most beguiling narratives this side of Oliver Twist." The Oprah Magazine
"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." Junot Diaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic's Circle Award forThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
"The Good Thief's characters are weird and wonderful.... [It] has all the makings of a classic---a hero, a villain and a rollicking good tale set in 19th century New England about a good boy who gets mixed up with a lot of bad men.... All of that, along with its humor, ingenuity and fast pace, make The Good Thief compelling." San Francisco Chronicle
"Ren lives every child's fantasy, to leave a mundane life for an adventure in which he discovers who he was supposed to be and who he could yet become. [His] mischievous ways earned the character comparisons toHuck FinnandOliver Twist. And the plot, which winds its way through a mousetrap factory and the memory of a family tragedy, certainly give him a literary playground in which to frolic." Associated Press
"The Good Thief is a dark, Dickensian fable filled with enough surprises to keep a reader turning pages long past midnight. Irresistibly strange, and just plain irresistible." Karl Iagnemma
"The Good Thief is wry, wise, deeply felt and ingeniously plotted, a wonderful, riveting spin on the tale of abandoned boys gone bad, or good, or both. Move over Huck Finn and Oliver Twist, make room for Ren,The Good Thief's one handed but quick fingered and witted orphan, thief--- hero, I loved him, and his book." Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
"The Good Thief is a book that deserves comparison to the work of classic authors like Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens not only because it's a remarkable piece of work, but also because it reminded me of what it used to be like, when I was a kid, to be truly engrossed in a book. You lift your head and hours have passed, and you realize that you've been utterly drawn into a world that is as vivid and real as your own. A masterful achievement." Dan Chaon, author of National Book Award finalist Among the Missing, and You Remind Me of Me
"The Good Thief is a magical book. Everything worth writing about is in it: love, death and more than anything else, family. I wish I'd written it." Daniel Wallace author ofMr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician
