"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 "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."
--O: 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 Díaz "
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 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
"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 "Difficult to put down . . . A cavalcade of chase scenes, suspenseful moments and revelations."
--Seattle Times "The kind of story that might have kept you reading all day when you were home sick from school. . . . Writing for adults while keeping to a child's perspective isn't easy, and Tinti makes it look effortless."
--The New York Times Book Review "Tinti secures her place as one of the sharpest, slyest young American novelists."
--Entertainment Weekly "[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."
--The New Yorker
A thrilling historical epic in the bestselling tradition of Fingersmith and The Shadow of the Wind one orphan's epic search for what's left of his family.