The Thief

[purplecat]

ladyofastolat recommended The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner a few months ago. The recommendation came with dire warnings: "do not read ahead", "do not even read the back". This was a huge trial since I am an inveterate skipper ahead which I know makes me a bad person but actually doesn't seem to spoil my enjoyment much. In fact, since I tend to worry about characters I like, skipping ahead can reassure me they're going to be OK. Having read it I don't think such exaggerated care is necessary - certainly the back of the book didn't give away anything that the intelligent reader wouldn't have worked out by about half way through. Skip ahead at your peril though. I wouldn't exactly say the book has a twist since it raises questions as it goes along and the "twist" leads on logically from and makes sense of all those questions.


Twist aside (and I agree with ladyofastolat, you should go read this book yourself so I'm not going to reveal it) this is still a good book. It is set in a sort of renaissance version of ancient Greece. Usually this sort of borrowing from existing cultures irritates me, but here it works. It means the characters can refer to Archimedes without having to indulge in a long rigamarole over who Archimedes is. I suspect the trick is in the execution, in the Thief the references to an existing culture seem entirely natural rather than forcing you to jump out of the fiction. Another thing that struck me while reading was that Ladyhawke (a film of which I am immensely fond, despite its numerous flaws) was clearly scripted by someone who had read the Thief since Matthew Broderick's boastful thief, escaping from the Bishop's prison, is basically Gen, the eponymous thief here with the numbers filed off and all real depth removed. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but Gen is a complex and engaging character and his first person narrative easily carries the book. Most interesting was the "extra" at the back of the book where the author recommends her favourite books including several Rosemary Sutcliff's, Puck of Pook's Hill, Tom's Midnight Garden and several I haven't read which I think I may now go and check out. Although The Thief is nothing like those books, it is easy to see it is coming from the same place.

An excellent book, highly recommended.