The Thief Lord

Funke, Cornelia. The Thief Lord. The Chicken House, 2003.

Will I get kicked out of the club if I admit that I was not reading under the covers to finish this highly-acclaimed fantasy book by German kids' lit rockstar Cornelia Funke?

Let me backtrack to say that this is undoubtedly a fantastic, well-written and clearly well-loved book. And that I did enjoy it and will certainly recommend it highly. But, given all the hype, I expected to be staying up way past my bedtime and was somewhat disappointed to just enjoy it. Something about it just didn't speak to the part of me that can get absolutely lost in children's and YA fantasy. Perhaps it just isn't fair to read any book so soon after Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

This book centers on the story of two siblings who have run away from their nasty aunt, Esther Hartlieb, who wants to adopt only the younger five year-old Bo but not his twelve year-old brother Prosper. Not wanting to be separated, the boys run away to Venice where they meet up with a motley group of children who live in an abandoned movie theatre and are supported by the loot of the mysterious "Thief Lord."

The children soon find themselves on the run from a Victor, a determined sleuth hired by their aunt, who turns out to be more interesting than he first appears. Things get even more complicated when the secretive "Conte" hires the Thief Lord and his gang of children to steal a strange wooden wing that holds the key to unlocking the unworldly powers of an old merry-go-round.

This is the classic orphan story - exploring the world of children living without adults, the theme of age and youth, and the search for a new family in which to belong. It is highly readable, and has a giant fan-base of young readers, but somehow it failed to capture the adult reader in me that still wants to be carried away by "children's" novels. It wasn't the neatly tied-up happy ending, because I didn't wait until the end to become slightly dis-engaged, but maybe something more to do with a lack of depth and involvement in individual characters or the particular flavour of light but action-packed adventure. I'm not sure. I do have a sense, however, that this is more a matter of personal taste than a reflection of the quality of the writing.