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| Author: | Ben Jonjak | | Publisher: | iUniverse.com,2002 | | ISBN: | 0595228844 | | Price: | $9.95 | | Pages: | 108 | | Reviewer: | Elaine Daly |
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“Thief” is a rare novel of intense power and ferocious imagery that pierces the reader with both its brevity and its bluntness. The story is the simple and inevitable progression of a young child who is abandoned on the streets and how he develops into a brutal and horrific monster. It is a fascinating look at the creation and the nature of evil. At every step along the way the child, the adolescent, the young man that eventually becomes the thief is denied assistance by the very people he can‘t help but admire for holding the key to the understanding of morality and goodness that is forever lost to him. In “Thief” Ben Jonjak realizes much of the potential he flashed in his first work, “Glorious Failure.” “Thief” is a much darker novel and much more single-minded. It immediately brings to mind the great short works of Hemmingway and London, “The Old Man and the Sea” and “The Call of the Wild”, not for any thematic relationship but because the novel has the flavor of something that was constructed over a few brief nights of feverish inspiration. Though only a hundred pages, “Thief” is a satire of inestimable weight and does not shy from the unanswerable questions of morality its subject matter suggests. Of all the young writers working today I look forward to the works of Ben Jonjak above all others. His writing is rhythmic and gentle and the significance of every word is tempered by the quest for human enlightenment. “Thief” is a must have, and is sure to be recognized as a new classic.
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