The boys of St. Anthony's
orphanage are the cast-offs of the world; left behind in the night by parents
they'll never know, they spend their days making wine with the monks and hoping
for adoption. If they aren't adopted, they get drafted into military service,
which means madness at best, death at worst. This leaves 12-year-old Ren in a
bad spot. More than anything else, he wants a family to take him home, but
since he's missing his left hand, his chances are poor. Then a man named
Benjamin Nab comes to St. Anthony's, claims Ren as his long-lost brother, and
tells the head of the orphanage a long, exciting story of Indian attacks and
dead parents. But Ren soon learns that Benjamin's stories have little to do
with the truth, and everything to do with getting him what he wants.
A lot of the word on
Hannah Tinti's debut novel The Good Thief consists of comparisons to Dickens, and
it's a difficult connection to miss. Tinti's maimed hero has the decency and
cleverness of Oliver Twist, and Benjamin Nab initially seems like just another
cut-rate Fagin. Even the setting, the New England of the 1800s, could stand in
for a more rural version of Dickens' soot-streaked London. As the novel
develops, though, it steps out from the shadow of its most obvious influences
to become a fast-paced adventure story with a deep undercurrent of regret. Ren
is no squeaky-clean ragamuffin, and the people he meets flirt with caricature
without becoming any less tragic.
Thief is strongest in its
middle section, when Ren, Benjamin, and their fellow con-man Thomas descend on
the town of North Umbrage to attempt a living as resurrection men. There, Tinti
unveils wonder after dark wonder, from the mousetrap factory staffed entirely
by ugly young women to a gigantic killer who becomes Ren's closest friend. Thief loses a little in its
climax, attempting to tie too much plot together too neatly, and pushing for an
emotional catharsis that comes across as forced and underdeveloped. But for all
that, it's still a terrific read. Magical without ever becoming maudlin, it
delivers a world of wandering outcasts whose chances for reconciliation seem
just as uncertain as Ren's one-handed grip.