Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Good Thief
    The Good Thief
    The Good Thief
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Good Thief

    Written by Hannah Tinti

    Narrated by William Dufris

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents.

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
    The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Kirkus Reviews

    Winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an American Library Association Alex Award

    Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony's Orphanage for boys. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world.

    But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he's lost once again. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well.

    Praise for The Good Thief

    "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

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 26, 2009
    ISBN9781423385349
    The Good Thief
    Author

    Hannah Tinti

    Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. Her short story collection Animal Crackers was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her bestselling novel The Good Thief won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an American Library Association Alex Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Tinti is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning literary magazine One Story.

    More audiobooks from Hannah Tinti

    Related to The Good Thief

    Related audiobooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ninth House

      Oct 9, 2019

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 450 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Leigh Bardugo Publisher Gollancz Fantasy writers were fascinated by schools and colleges long before Harry Potter caught the train to Hogwarts, and it’s fairly easy to draw up a list of th

      1 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Jul 9, 2020

      Hilderbrand’s latest novel is perfect for cosy weekend reading. This time she focuses on former lovers who now lead separate lives but share an island idyll once a year. Captivating and bittersweet. (Available Jul. 23) Inseparable twins Stella and

      1 min read

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      Part 1 WHEN FISH FLY: The Revolt on the Slave Ship Creole

      Jan 1, 2022

      Part 1 WHEN FISH FLY: The Revolt on the Slave Ship Creole
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Elders

      Oct 16, 2021

      The Elders
      6 min read

    • Article

      Plots

      May 5, 2022

      Plots
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Parsonage in New Hope

      Dec 4, 2023

      A Parsonage in New Hope
      12 min read

    • Article

      In Love And War

      Jun 10, 2021

      April 1943 - Krakow, Poland Irena was bent over her needlework, stitching the frayed seam of her skirt when she heard a single gunshot ring out. She jerked and then scowled. After four years of war, she ought to be used to it. Why, the other night a

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Loading Brush

      Sep 1, 2017

      The Art of Loading Brush
      27 min read

    • Article

      Paddling Through History

      Jun 15, 2023

      Paddling to DeCourcy Island is at the top of my summer activities wish list. The Southern Gulf Island region is steeped in thousands of years of culture and history for the Snuneymuxw, Stz’uminus, Lyackson, Halalt, and Penelakut First Nations. DeCour

      9 min read

    • Article

      Fool’s Gold

      Oct 1, 2019

      Fool’s Gold
      17 min read

    • Article

      Your LETTERS

      Nov 12, 2021

      Your LETTERS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Across The Whited Fields

      Oct 13, 2019

      In a twilight streeta small girl laughing. The red and yellow flowersprofuse, inhale the air. We want to hold your name,Polly, dancing in the rain Polly, skipping down the street.Sometimes the world bequeaths then takes away the one to whomou

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Glove

      Mar 4, 2024

      The Glove
      8 min read

    • Article

      Winter Term

      Sep 6, 2022

      She walked to school along streets named for English poets, but the one thing everyone in Melbourne knew about her suburb was its nameless canal. It was held to be behind headaches, sore throats, and babies who wouldn’t settle, and was considered lit

      19 min read

    • Article

      On Bended Knee

      Nov 2, 2022

      On Bended Knee
      2 min read

    • Article

      Poetry

      Jun 1, 2021

      Poetry
      3 min read

    • Article

      Brontez Purnell, Fiction

      Mar 21, 2018

      Brontez Purnell, Fiction
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Warning To The Fortean

      Jul 14, 2022

      A Warning To The Fortean
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Good Thief

    3.5/5

    647 ratings91 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This is a captivating and lively story. A side of early America that we rarely are exposed to.
    • 5/5
      Hannah Tinti's THE GOOD THIEF is a delightful and compelling read, the kind of novel I think of as "an entertainment," as opposed to serious literary fiction. That said, I loved it, and could not stop reading it. The protagonist is a 12 year-old orphan named Ren, who is missing one hand. It is a story filled with monks and murderers, thieves and liars, grave robbers and widows. Oh and there's a giant, and a dwarf too. And a mousetrap factory run by a cruel boss. It's a tough story to summarize, and doing that would spoil it, so I'm not even going to try. It's very Dickensian, only more. Think, say, a blend of Oliver Twist and The Princess Bride, and a young boy searching for family. Trust me. It's a humdinger of a story. You wanna lose yourself in a fantastical soup of weird characters and unlikely adventures in a bygone time? Then this is the book for you. A mesmerizing read.- Tim Bazzett, author the memoir, BOOKLOVER
    • 5/5
      Right from page one, I found myself drawn in and taken along on a wonderfully wild ride! The characters were well drawn and, oddly enough in some cases, likable. The situations they found themselves in were both bizarre and believable. Throughout the story, I was reminded of two recent books I?ve read and loved - the buddy elements of City of Thieves and foundling aspect of The Graveyard Book. I was captivated by the story and didn?t want to put it down.
    • 2/5
      The author's prose is not deft enough to deliver the kind of magical, atmospheric experience to which the book so desperately aspires. This is a shame, because she has pulled together the ingredients for a charming book - but they do not actually charm. The telling is devoid of "shamanstvo," the power to enchant. In her attempt to find a style that combines directness with poetry, maturity with fairy-tale simplicity, the author has, I think, fallen into a sort of trap. Her successive sentences tend to be logically isolated from one another and not coalesce into any kind of flow; the effect is of a choppy assemblage of separate observations and reports. We might learn about a room by hearing what its floorboards, windows, and lamps look like, and what sounds the character heard there, and, as a result, we can always tell what kind of impression we're SUPPOSED to have - but because the "camera" is bouncing so relentlessly from detail to detail, we never quite feel that we ARE there, we're never able to smell the space ourselves. I was always more directly aware of the author plotting out a novel than I was of the actual characters, events, etc. That's fine for some kinds of stories, but is deadly for a story like this, which aims to succeed on the strength of creating a mysterious, memorable world. It reminded me of a certain type of failed high-budget children's fantasy movie, in which beautiful, evocative production design comes off as worthless and artificial due to uninspired direction.In short: it felt flat, and that's not something this story could afford.
    • 4/5
      This story takes place in the New England of the 19th century. Ren, abandoned at Saint Anthony's Orphanage for boys as an infant and missing one of his hands, is twelve years old when Benjamin Nab comes to the orphanage and claims to be his long lost brother. Ren leaves the orphanage with the unreliable and dishonest Benjamin, and begins a life as a reluctant thief, scam artist, and grave robber. This is not a typical warm and fuzzy orphan tale written for children. It is a harsh story of lies, greed, brutality and murder, where Ren learns the value of friendship and loyalty as he struggles to discover who he is, who he was, and who he's going to be. This book started a little slow at first but soon grabbed and kept my interest right up to the surprising end.
    • 3/5
      thought there was going to be a little more to the story than there was. surprising ending!
    • 4/5
      Fun, Fun, Fun. This book was so much fun to read. Tinti, while she may not be another Dickens, is a great storyteller. She weaves a wildly imaginative story with a host of colorful characters and throws in lots of twists that make it almost impossible to put down.
    • 2/5
      Twelve-year-old Ren is an orphan with a missing hand. How he lost that hand is a mystery, as he was abandoned at Saint Anthony’s Orphanage for boys when he was an infant, without any note or identifying marks, save for embroidered REN inside the gown he was wearing. Occasionally a man will come to choose a boy, but Ren is never chosen. Until one day when a man appears, claiming to be Ren’s brother. Benjamin’s plausible story of how Ren lost his hand convinces Father John and Ren leaves the orphanage. But Benjamin may not be who he claims to be, and Ren is quickly absorbed into a gang of scam artists, grave robbers and petty thieves. I had heard good reports of this novel and I was intrigued by the premise. Tinti captured my attention at the beginning and certainly kept me reading, but I found it very dark and distasteful. The scenarios, schemes, and twists in the plot just seemed like a list of “what will be next to befall this kid.” I never quite understood any of the characters – what motivated them and what held them together in their relationships to one another. The ending was quite a stretch, in my humble opinion, as if Tinti needed to wrap it up and give the reader some hope for the future. Tinti does give the reader a real sense of the time and place. Though the year is never mentioned, this is a horse-and-wagon economy with some mines and some factories. The Army sometimes recruits older boys from St Anthony’s so perhaps there is a war being fought. There’s never any mention of an automobile, so I’m thinking Industrial Era, say circa 1812-1815. I loved the descriptions of the farmer’s fields, barns, animals … all new vistas to Ren’s eyes. I also really enjoyed Mrs Sands and descriptions of life in her boarding house. But the things I liked about the book can’t quite make up for my general dislike.
    • 4/5
      When the one-handed boy known only as Ren is "adopted" from the St. Anthony's Orphanage by a man claiming to be his brother, the pair embark on a Dickensian journey through the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. in the mid-1800s, perpetrating larcenies both petty and grand.

      Tinti is less wordy than Dickens (fortunately), but does rely on colorful characters to populate her story and coincidence to resolve the plot and tuck in all the details.

      It's a satisfying read for all of that. Suitable for the older YA audience (there is considerable blood-letting and a murder or two along the way), but complex enough to satisfy the adult reader as well.
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful, touching novel full of characters that you root for and come to care about. The time period is not specified, but feels early 1900's. The main character is Ren, a young boy raised in a Catholic orphanage and missing one hand. He was left at the orphanage as a baby in secret, and no one knows who his parents were and why he was left there. Men come occasionally to the orphanage to adopt a child, but no one wants a boy with one hand. Ren yearns for a family and dreads his inevitable induction into the army, but one day a miracle occurs. A man named Benjamin shows up claiming Ren as his brother, and tells a long tale of an Indiana attack that killed their parents and took Ren’s missing hand. Ren’s dream of being adopted comes true, but Benjamin is not the brother he claims, and soon Ren is involved in small-time cons, thievery and grave-robbing adventures with Benjamin and his partner Tom. I really enjoyed reading this story and loved the many different characters. Personally I’m hoping for a sequel to find out what happened next.
    • 5/5
      This is one book that has been superbly done as an audio title. The reader uses many voices to convey the characters, but he gives special meaning to Dolly. I suspect I would have loved the hard copy version of this book as much as the audio (although the reverse is not always true.
      I just loved the blend of the characters, their foibles, and their humanity.
    • 4/5
      Loved the premise of this book: orphaned one-armed young boy being claimed by a man who claims to be his brother in the early years in New England. Ren only knows his name due to a small scrap of fabric that was found with him when he was abandoned at the St. Anthony Orphanage. When Benjamin Nab comes to the orphanage, he claims him as his long lost brother and tells a wild tale about how the boy lost his arm. Benjamin is, in fact, a swindler and con artist along with his friend Tom. They use Ren as a part of their schemes at time such as selling a potion for bad behaving children.The story is sort of a Dickensian adventure story as the group as one adventure after the other eventually leading to grave robbery which was profitable as a local surgeon would pay for the bodies to help him study. Along the way they meet other colorful characters such as Dolly, the giant who is paid to kill people with this own hands, and Mrs. Sands, the deaf owner of a boarding house for the girls who work at the McGlinty Mousetrap factory.One trouble leads to another and it is eventually Ren discovers his real name, the story of his dead mother, and his relationship to Benjamin.I probably read the first half of the book in one setting loving the characters and adventure. However, time interfered and I lost part of the plot. At times, it had almost a touch of magical realism such as the digging up of Dolly in a grave. The ending is perhaps a bit too pat, but overall I enjoyed the story even though it is filled with violence and terrible situations, but always told with a light hand.
    • 5/5
      I really liked this novel set in the early 1900s America about a young orphan named Ren and what happens to him when he's adopted by a man, Benjamin Nab, claiming to be his older brother. Ren showed up at the orphanage as a baby missing one hand and this man has a long, detailed story about how it happened and what happened to their parents. Ren is a good kid. This man is obviously a liar and we soon find out that he's also a thief. But throughout the book, even when put in unbelievably awful situations and even through some questionable decisions, Ren is a good person and people like him almost immediately. He's not a goody-two-shoes or saccharine-sweet, he's just the kind of person that people trust and feel connected to. The books hinges on this idea of lies vs. truth that we're introduced to by Benjamin. This was the key concept for me - that the truth is the most horrifying scenario for these characters. After leaving the orphanage, Benjamin tells Ren the "real story" about their parents and it is absolutely gruesome. Ren says:"I don't want to hear anymore""All right." Benjamin let go. "Is that what you wanted to hear?""No."The man reached over, took hold of the lantern, and blew it out. Night enveloped the barn. "Well," he said at last to the darkness between them, "that's when you know it's the truth."I really loved Tinti's writing and I will definitely read her new book that just came out. This was her first novel and it is really well done. It doesn't get five stars because parts were a little gory for my taste (they spend time as grave robbers and there's lots of violence) but it was definitely part of the story, not gratuitous. The book has this great Dickens feel without trying too hard to be a Dickens remake. The characters are fantastic and I like the underlying themes. I'd highly recommend this.
    • 3/5
      My 11 year old and I both listened to this book and very quickly he out stripped me and finished the book a good week or so before I did. Quite frankly, if he hadn't pushed I don't I would have finished listening to it - mainly because the narrator drove me a bit nuts. I did get caught up in the story finally, and enjoyed it (even as I thought the ending was over the top). As Ben said "it gets really bad for awhile and then everything turns out really good" (far too good for my liking).
    • 4/5
      Even a murderer can have redeeming qualities. No one in this book is 'ususal'. I read this in two sittings.
    • 4/5
      Good read easy -- not sure of reading level, but nice.
    • 1/5
      If you think Stephanie Meyer is a good writer, you'll think Tinti a genius. If you think Mark Twain was a rambling and uneventful writer, you'll love this book. If you crave depth, scenery, metaphor, full characters, finely tuned prose, or even a shred of literary talent, look elsewhere. The story is far too plagued with tropes to begin with, but the writing is absolutely void of tone, of fluid movement, of good grammar even. I got it for free and feel ripped off.

      I'm a snob. So what? If you're not read the book. But be warned...Not recommended.
    • 3/5
      Meh ... (could have done without the Murder She Wrote accents).
    • 2/5
      This book definitely is NOT a children's book; it's a young ADULT title. I found it to be a page-turner but in the end I did not feel much love for the characters. *shrug*
    • 5/5
      Fantastic! This is the perfect book for a book club. There are a lot of things to talk about. Ren is taken from St. Anthony's orphanage by Benjamin Nab. Benjamin is a wanted man. He is also a con man. He has so many stories that you never know what is true. Ren has a strong sense of right and wrong from being raised by the priests. Can Benjamin corrupt him? I liked Ren. He is so strong. He wants a family even though Benjamin tells him to wish for something that he can obtain. Ren goes along with Benjamin as he rejoins his partner-in-crime, Tom. Along the way Ren picks up friends. Some stay, some are gone quickly. His best friend is Dolly, a dead man who was not dead when he was buried. Somehow Ren gets through to Dolly, a paid assassin. Ren also finds a "mother" in Mrs. Sands and Sister Agnes. He learns about his mother from Sister Agnes. His uncle is a piece of work. There is no good in him at all and I began to wonder if Ren was a product of an incestuous rape. Ren's life is hard but somehow his goodness and the innocent way he sees the world does not become corrupt. I loved this book.
    • 3/5
      I'm a fan of the old-fashioned picaresque novel -- the kind of tale in which, as in (say) most of Dickens's early stuff, the end doesn't depend too much on the beginning, even though the course from beginning to end is a logical or at least comprehensible one. (Most of our lives are picaresque in structure.) Recently a few authors seem to have rediscovered the picaresque mode, and one of these is Hannah Tinti.

      Ren's stuck in a late-19th-century northeastern orphanage and unlikely ever to get out, because one of his arms ends not in a hand but in an unsightly stump. Yet the day comes when Benjamin Nab arrives to claim Ren as supposedly his long-lost brother. Of course, that's false; Benjamin's a thief and conman who thinks Ren's disability could be put to good use in gulling the gullible. Soon Benjamin, Ren and Benjamin's habitually drunken pal Tom are committing criminal acts, including graverobbing, all over the northeastern USA; one of the occupants of a grave they rob, the monstrous Dolly (a male Dolly), proves to be a hitman, and he too fits conformably into their gang. There's a lot of good humour and a fair amount of genuine physical and emotional pain in this rollicking tale.

      The whole time I was reading this I kept thinking of F.E. Higgins's The Black Book of Secrets, which I loved and which was published the previous year and written in similar style (and with a couple of similar preoccupations, like the monetary value of stolen teeth). I think in the end I probably preferred the Higgins book, especially since it didn't, as does Tinti's (see p317, for example), suffer the occasional rash of outright sloppy writing. But this book too has its merits. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      Well I finished another book. I really don't know how I feel about it. It was different which made me like it. I just felt it was slow moving and not one that I really captured me. The characters were not ones that I fell in love with. I did find them interesting but not that interesting.#21. [The Good Thief] by Hannah TintiI didn't love nor did I hate this book. It was just eh. I started to get into the book about half way through.The story is about orphans. And the main one is Ren. He is a one handed orphan. He doesn't know anything about how he lost his hand. When Ren is adopted he is not sure if the person is his father. The priest still gives Benjamin the boy, Ren because he knows that he will not be adopted.The adventures or criminal activities that transpire are interesting and a way to get to know Ren and Benjamin better.3 starsI am still reading my ER book. I will also be starting 2 more books.Happy Reading all!!
    • 3/5
      The story was average, but the author is quite creative. I enjoyed the author's writing style and prose. Not the best novel I've read, but certainly not the worst. But, it did leave me uninspired. I was somewhat taken aback by the author's fixation with penises (i.e. the dwarf and the naked man in the cemetery). And it seems the author has a fixation with human oddities (giant, giantess, and a dwarf) not to mention the main character's missing hand. Overall, the story was dark and hopeless, but I knew this going into it. What I did like about the story is that I haven't read anything like it before and it was quite illustrious. Therefore, it did very well in keeping me fully engaged and I never lost interest. Another positive aspect to the story is that it remained unpredictable and it was placed in a historical setting that I was unfamiliar with.I give it a 3-star rating for a decent story and wonderfully written, but nothing captivating or award winning in my estimation. I don't have any desire to seek out other works by Hannah Tinti, but if one were handed to me for free, I would likely read it.
    • 4/5
      Rating: 4 of 5What an unusual tale; a real page-turner written by a talented storyteller. Tinti's descriptions were so vivid, I swear I could smell the boys' room at Saint Anthony's. And how surprising to find myself rooting for Ren, a one-handed liar and thief who, by most standards, is not a "good" kid.Perhaps Tinti's best idea in The Good Thief was placing such a seemingly unlikeable protagonist into a world filled with flawed and unsavory characters - where the line between good and evil wasn't only blurred black and white, it was darn near invisible gray. That way, readers don't feel as guilty when we find ourselves hoping Ren, who just robbed someone, will catch a break with no bad luck attached in the next scene.Tinti was not shy at all about putting the "hero" at the mercy of con artists, thieves and murderers which made for a book full of tension and conflict. Recommended to all ages who enjoy tales about orphans and their quests for finding what they want most in life.Status update, 1/12/2012, page 76: Tinti really knows how to grab a reader's attention and keep it. What is it about orphans and their tales?
    • 4/5
      great storytelling esp. for fans of Charles Dickens; best to read in one sitting going back to it I had to re-immerse myself in the story
    • 4/5
      This was a very good book. My only complaint was that I felt like Tinti had created a very rich world, and portions of the book flew by too quickly. I don't mean to say that the plot was unearned, or happened inorganically, simply that I would have enjoyed sitting in some scenes and environments longer. I think that's a pretty good problem to have.
    • 3/5
      This was an airplane book for me, and for that purpose it was a fine one: a quickly paced adventure story, reminiscent of Stevenson or Dickens. In the end, I felt it strained credibility and toed the absurd much more than I care for, & of course my most common complaint of ultimately flat characters. But then I have never had a taste for Dickens, and it was very clear that Dickensonian was what Tinti aspired towards.
    • 3/5
      This is an adventurous Dickens-like story where we come across an orphan boy with a missing arm who searches to discover the truth about his arm and his parents. There's a great deal of thieving in this as the title suggests but the major strength of the novel are the vivid personalities of the characters that the protagonist Ren comes across.

      It's actually a rather curious and fun sort of read. Intelligent enough to make you feel like your brain isn't actually atrophying but, at the same time, definitely not life changing. If there was a literature genre called "Smart Leisure Reading" then this one would go there.

      It was actually a bit of a relief and a break to read this one after Pynchon's Against the Day, I have to admit.
    • 3/5
      When unwanted boys are abandoned at St. Anthony's monastery, they face one of two futures - adoption or conscription into the army. With just one hand, young Ren is excited and relieved when a man claiming to be his older brother adopts him. Benjamin Nab tells a fascinating tale of how their parents were killed and Ren's hand was cut off. Ren wants to believe the man is his brother but Benjamin soon proves himself to be an accomplished liar and thief. On the other hand, Ren, is a thief, too, stealing small items from his companions when he sees an opportunity.They meet up with Tom, Benjamin's partner, and set off in search of money-making schemes. Promise of good pay for resurrection men (grave-robbers for medical research) leads them to a town that holds unpleasant memories for Benjamin. Ren meets an array of characters including a landlady who shouts, a giant "born for killing", and a dwarf. When they run afoul of the most powerful man in town, however, Ren's adventure takes a dangerous turn and he begins to discover what kind of person he is - a thief, yes, but also a boy of faith and loyalty.Tinti's story is more like an old-fashioned childhood adventure than a more modern (e.g. Harry Potter) tale. The "good" in Ren's life is so misshapen and strange that it's not always recognizable and his journey is steeped in hopelessness, uncertainty, liquor, blood and dirt. An ambitious, but sometimes dreary, novel.
    • 2/5
      We've all gone to movies where we have sat enthralled and only when we have left the theater do we start going - wait a minute! This is a wonderful romp until about half way and then the contrivances that are to set up and dominate the ending begin crowding out the character and the story. Ren the amputee who is the main character keeps his vulnerability well hidden (up his sleeve literally) but because we are privy to his thoughts we experience the strange deformities of the adult world through his virgin eyes. We are in a Dickensian New England, where even the sympathetic people have some infirmity. Soon we realize that they have very little character other than the business Tinti has given them and it gets flatter and flatter until we meet the main villain who is ridiculous, neither believable nor that interesting. He is a plot piece and nothing more. Its going to be made into a movie it has that feel. Ugh