Yesterday I read The Good Thief (published 2008) by Hannah Tinti. The story here is a tale to be told around a campfire, a New England fairy tale with orphans and a dwarf and a giant, betrayed lovers and vengeful brothers.  The story is fantastic (unbelievable) as are the characters in the story.  Ren, the one-handed, orphan hero is a re-imagined Pip but with none of Pip’s deeper humanity.  Ren is a character, not a real person; he is engaging and good and honorable, like Pip, but the reader is given no sense of his emotions or contradictory impulses through the very tumultuous ups and downs of this tale.

The Good Thief moves fast, never slowing down, always speeding up and twisting around, becoming even more unbelievable with every turn. Despite, or maybe because of, the constant propelling movement, I was not moved or engaged by this book.  The story is a good one but I need time to think and breathe and feel when I am reading and Hannah Tinti allows no time for that.  The story is rushed and flurried and in the end, rather insubstantial.

I read the book quickly, sucked it up like a milkshake but at the end I was unsatisfied.  For a great story about an orphan and his adventures, read Great Expectations or David Copperfield.  No one does it better than Dickens.