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.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Ooh, glad you liked it! I always like to be over-cautious with my spoiler warnings, rather than say too much. I read it while off work ill, back in... 1998, I believe? - and perhaps that blunted my brain, since I really didn't see the twist coming one little bit.

There are two sequels. The first sequel is a bit of shock after The Thief, since it seems rather different - not told in the first person, for one, and quite a bit darker - but the third in the series brings everything together wonderfully. Apparently she's working on the fourth, for which there is much rejoicing.

The book post-dates Ladyhawke, though, so if there's any borrowing, it'll be the other way round. Playing "spot the Rosemary Sutcliff reference" is a favourite game of fans. There are several semi-quotes and thematic borrowings, especially from her Roman books. I've also spotted a direct nod to Howl's Moving Castle, but have probably missed other references.

[purplecat]

Maybe simply knowing there was a "twist" made me more alert to the hints being sprinkled through the book. I was pretty certain by the time we got to, umm... well probably the stage where the characters start relating myths to each other, that there was more to organisation(s)/person(s)/place(s)/task(s)/thing(s)/some or all of the above X, Y and Z than met the eye and while I didn't guess it all, my thinking was mostly along the right lines (except for the reveal about person-whose-secret-Gen-had-guessed-but-underestimated which I'd expected to be fluffier).

I'm surpised it post-dates Ladyhawke, its kind of easy to see how you would get to MB's character(boastful, talkative, often irritating to his companions, cowardly, thief, obsessed by his mother and escaping from an inescapable large dungeon on a hill filled with the Bishop's enemies) to Gen (boastful, talkative, often irritationg to his companions, generally cowardly, thief, mourning his mother and failing to escape from a not-entirely inescapable large dungeon on a hill right next to the King of Sounis' palace) but harder to see it going the other way since Gen brings so much more to the story - maybe they both derive from something earlier.