The Thief of That
In David Ewald’s riveting science fiction caper The Thief of That, an anxiety-ridden aspiring novelist is given the chance to travel backward in time.
At thirty, underemployed Ravel worries that the opportunities he deserved all passed him by. His college girlfriend married a successful novelist, his estranged father is up for a prestigious literary award, and his wife is finishing her dissertation; even his father-in-law, a police officer, secured a literary agent before him. Meanwhile, Ravel toils in a cubicle, never managing to get past the first chapter of his novel-in-the-works. He worries that he’ll die as unrecognized as his poet mother, if with fewer publications to his name. When he reconnects with a former student via a million-dollar order, though, new vistas open up: if he can “tesser well,” he may be able to rewrite his tale.
Ravel’s plot involves defying the established rules of time travel to claim a famed novelist’s beloved tome as his own. The creative means by which he’ll accomplish this are shadowed as he pounds away at his keyboard for months, reshaping the inspired work. What remains consistent is his sense of indignation that he has not yet attained the success he is sure he deserves. This propels him past his doubts about plagiarism and sustains him through problematic encounters with family members, bookstore patrons, disillusioned ex-writers, and former loves; his sanity is subsumed by his overwhelming thirst for “some small degree of immortality.” His actions are egregious and fascinating, leading to uproarious, absurdist twists. Still, even at his least sympathetic, Ravel manages to be an endearing antihero; when asked to answer for his missteps, he mopes and notes “at least the puppy loved him.”
Salvation and self-acceptance are inseparable for a disappointed novelist in the droll speculative novel The Thief of That.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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