Thief - Hardcover

"In her relentlessly compelling new novel, "Thief"--which I read in a single sitting--Maureen Gibbon's plainspoken, tough-minded heroine gives herself an unsentimental education and issues a sorrowful yet stirring declaration of independence." --David Gates, author of "Jernigan "and "The Wonders of the Invisible World""Gibbon writes beautifully of the heartbreaking gulf between expectation and reality that women continue to endure, and the tragedies that await those who refuse to abide by these difficulties. It is her heroine's refusal to be afraid, her understanding of the violence at the heart of things, her embrace of the world's beauty, and her great conscience that save her, and inspire the reader." --Susanna Moore, author of "The Big Girls""In an odd way this book is a female, and highly sexual, version of Thoreau's Walden; there are some lovely bits about solitude, nature and solitude-in-nature, but Suzanne is a woman who craves and needs contact, and much of her contemplation is devoted to exploring the tangled roots of that need. Grim but inspiring, this is a flint-tough, plainspoken novel about a flint-tough, plainspoken woman who asks no pity and gives no quarter." --"Kirkus Reviews""" "This searing, compact novel can be read in one sitting for maximum intensity. Suzanne's direct voice, stripped of self-pity, will draw readers in and keep them there." --Joanne Wilkinson, "Booklist" "In her relentlessly compelling new novel, "Thief"-which I read in a single sitting-Maureen Gibbon's plainspoken, tough-minded heroine gives herself an unsentimental education and issues a sorrowful yet stirring declaration of independence." -David Gates, author of "Jernigan "and "The Wonders of the Invisible World ""Gibbon writes beautifully of the heartbreaking gulf between expectation and reality that women continue to endure, and the tragedies that await those who refuse to abide by these difficulties. It is her heroine's refusal to be afraid, her understanding of the violence at the heart of things, her embrace of the world's beauty, and her great conscience that save her, and inspire the reader." -Susanna Moore, author of "The Big Girls""In an odd way this book is a female, and highly sexual, version of Thoreau's Walden; there are some lovely bits about solitude, nature and solitude-in-nature, bu

When Suzanne rents a cabin for the summer, she is intent upon spending her days swimming in the nearby lake, and her nights alone or with occasional strangers. But her seclusion is broken when she receives a reply to a personal ad she has placed in a local paper: the letter is postmarked 'Stillwater State Prison'. The letter is from a man called Alpha Breville: convict, thief, rapist. When she was sixteen, Suzanne was raped by her friend's brother, and the memory of the man she calls 'my rapist' still haunts her. She chooses to write back to Alpha, but what begins as a remote correspondence quickly evolves into something much more dangerous, exciting, and intimate. All at once, they seem to have transgressed every boundary between them. The pair embark on a sexually charged relationship that tests the lines between control and abandonment, power and vulnerability, compulsion and desire, innocence and culpability. Written in measured, intense, and disarmingly honest prose, Thief is a hard-hitting and uncompromising novel about women's relationship with their bodies; about power, control and sex.