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“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 of Eat, Pray, Love
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“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
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“Marvelously
satisfying…rich with sensory details, surprising twists, and living, breathing
characters to root for.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“Ren, with his love for religion and penchant
for thievery, is immediately likeable…A novel full of scams, shams, and
underhanded deals and populated by hustlers, thieves, and grave robbers.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“In her highly original debut novel, [Tinti]
renders the horrors and wonders she concocts utterly believable and rich in
implication as she creates a darkly comedic and bewitching, sinister yet
life-affirming tale about the eternal battle between good and evil.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“A dark but nimble variation on that favorite nineteenth-century
literary trope, the woeful orphan story…Ren becomes the surprising moral center
of a colorful band of misfits and grave robbers. His sentimental education
about what it means to be a ‘good’ boy makes for a Dickens of a tale.”
— USA Today
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“A very good book indeed…Reminds you why you fell
in love with reading in the first place…Tinti’s imaginative powers…reacquaint
us with our own. And that’s a gift to be
cherished.”
— Boston Globe
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“A striking debut novel…Unfolds like a Robert
Louis Stevenson tale retold amid the hardscrabble squalor of Colonial New
England. The sheer strangeness of the
story is beguiling…Good fun.”
— New Yorker
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“Tinti secures her place as one of the sharpest,
slyest young American novelists.”
— Entertainment Weekly
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“Difficult to put down…A cavalcade of chase
scenes, suspenseful moments and revelations.”
— Seattle Times
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“Tightly plotted, unmannered, irresistible.
Tinti writes in a lean, pitch-perfect prose that grabs the reader’s mind and
won’t let go. The incidents she relates are dark and grim, but the telling leaves
room for humanity and humor.”
— Orlando Sentinel
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“A debut novel so rich that you’ll hope it becomes
the first in a series…Part coming-of-age tale and part pure adventure, The Good Thief evokes Charles Dickens with
its blend of humor, social commentary, and poignancy.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
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“The key to Tinti’s success with this novel is
the constant tension between tenderness and peril, a tension that she ratchets
up until the final pages…[With] enough harrowing scrapes and turns to satisfy
your inner Dickens.”
— Washington Post Book World
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“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 to Huck Finn and Oliver 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
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“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 nineteenth 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
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“Hannah Tinti has written a lightning strike of
a novel—beautiful and haunting and ever so bright. She is a twenty-first
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 Díaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Critic’s Circle Award for The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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“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.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine