Thief of Time [Paperback]

John Boyne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2001

It is 1758 and Matthieu Zela is fleeing Paris for Dover, having witnessed the murder of his mother by his stepfather and his subsequent execution for that crime. With Matthieu is his five year old brother Tomas and his companion and 'one true love', Dominique Sauvet. What follows is the story of Matthieu's life. Beginning in murder and ending in redemption, Matthieu's life is characterised by one extraordinary fact: before the eighteenth century ends, he discovers that his body has stopped ageing. At the end of the twentieth century, he is able to look back on a life lived to the full. He has been an engineer, a rogue, a movie mogul, a soldier, a financier, a lover to many, a cable TV executive and more. The tale of his life involves murder, love, treachery, despair, passion, glamour, and, ultimately hope.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Published in the U.K. before his hits Crippen and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, this novel sails similarly historical currents with mixed results. Matthieu Zela is 256 years old in 1999, but doesn't look a day over 50. (Bafflingly—to himself, too—he simply stopped aging.) Loquacious Matthieu crisscrosses the centuries with wry, autobiographical narration, moving from his current incarnation as a satellite TV entrepreneur in London to his coming-of-age in the 1750s, when he leaves Paris for England with his young half-brother Tomas in tow and meets his one true love, Dominique Sauvet. Matthieu's one deep regret, however, isn't romance-related: of the 10 generations of Thomases descended from his brother, each has had his life cut short, "either by his own stupidity or by the machinations of the times." Matthieu's current nephew, Tommy, a wildly popular soap opera star, is a heroin addict and not long for this world. Matthieu vows to prevent his too-early demise. In between, Matthieu shares too predictable highlights from his brushes with world events (the French Revolution, the 1929 stock market crash, etc.) and famous people (Pope Pius IX, Charlie Chaplin, the Rosenbergs). The picaresque nature of this hopscotch through history's hot spots suits Boyne's big-canvas talent, but Matthieu, in his unexplained immortality, is more like a storytelling device than a fully realized character. This novel is not a follow-up but a practice run. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Akin to Dorian Gray (but without the debauched lifestyle), Matthieu Zela is over 250 years old but still looks like a man in his late 40s. Born in Paris in 1743, Matthieu is orphaned as a teenager and sails to England with his half-brother Tomas--there he meets his one true love, the beautiful yet manipulative Dominique. After their affair ends in tragedy, he embarks on a colorful journey through the centuries, meeting up with such notables as Pope Pius IX, Robespierre, Charlie Chaplin, Herbert Hoover, and the Rosenbergs. All the while, he watches over each successive generation of his half-brother's descendents--all male, all with some variant of the name Thomas, and all sadly dying at a young age (but not before begetting an heir). He never bewails his long-lived condition like some dissolute character out of an Anne Rice novel, but enjoys life and, in his words, leads a "constructive existence." This lively historical saga (with a touch of the fantastic--the reason for Matthieu's longevity is never explored) is undyingly recommended. Michael Gannon
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix Paperbacks (September 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753812762
• ISBN-13: 978-0753812761
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,639,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971 and is the author of seven novels for adults and two for children. The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas won two Irish Book Awards, was shortlisted for the British Book Award, reached no.1 on the New York Times Bestseller List and was made into an award-winning Miramax feature film. His novels are published in over 40 languages. He lives in Dublin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unique Points of View, February 16, 2006

By 

Richard Stoehr "Idle Rich" (Bremerton, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thief of Time (Paperback)

"And I am not one of these long-living fictional characters who prays for death as a release from the captivity of eternal life; not for me the endless whining and wailing of the undead."

With these words, written on the first few pages of his novel "The Thief of Time," John Boyne pretty much sold me on the central idea of the book: a man who is over 250 years old but looks like a man in his late 40's or early 50's, and who has looked essentially the same for about 200 years.

Matthieu Zela, the long-lived main character, has lived a long time and seen much change in his life. I found the perspective he had on his apparent immortality quite refreshing -- he does not question it and he does not curse it. He simply accepts it as part of his life and lives...really lives. In his time he experiences the French Revolution, the Great Exhibition, the Great Depression, the rise of Hollywood, war, marriage, love, and death. So much death, all around him...but not for him.

The strength of the book comes from its ability to capture uniquely all the different time periods experienced and convince us that they are all seen through the eyes of this one singular character. Bouncing back and forth to different places in the past to modern day and back to the past again, Boyne tells several stories in parallel, and we slowly come to learn about the central events in Matthieu's life that changed him most dramatically, including the loss of the first true love he would ever know. Each thread of story is skillfully handled, coming together at last in a satisfying ending that explains only just enough, and still leaves much up to the imagination of the reader.

"The Thief of Time" is ambitious in its way, depending on the fact that the reader will be interested enough in the story to not question too much the whys and wherefores of it -- that they, as Matthieu himself does, will simply accept it as presented and enjoy it for what it is...an entertaining tale of a life, skillfully told. If there is a lesson to be learned from this book, it is that not everything has to be fully understood to be appreciated. Some experiences are enough in themselves. This book is one of them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining foray through the years, told with style and wit, May 29, 2007

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thief of Time (Hardcover)

Frenchman Matthieu Zéla may be the only 256-year-old television executive in London. He has been gifted with extraordinary long life minus the nuisance of actually aging, but this supposed blessing comes with a price: Matthieu must bear witness to the destruction of a long line of nephews and grand-nephews, who all die young and violent deaths and are named some variation of Thomas.

THE THIEF OF TIME by John Boyne (author of the recent bestseller THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS and the acclaimed novel CRIPPEN) begins in the French revolution during Matthieu's natural lifespan. After his mother's murder at the hands of his stepfather, Matthieu leaves France for England, his young stepbrother Thomas --- the first of the doomed Thomases --- in tow. The boys soon meet Dominique, another French citizen fleeing Paris. They join forces, finding work as domestics in an English village, and Dominique becomes Matthieu's first love. Their story is told intermittently between Matthieu's adventures over the last 200 years to bring us up to 1990.

Matthieu is a Zelig figure, planning the first Olympics, partying with Charlie Chaplin and watching his first career in television fall victim to McCarthyism. After a dozen or so wives and nearly as many career changes, Matthieu is a TV executive worried over the current Thomas, Tommy DuMarqué, a soap opera star with dangerous habits. One of Tommy's girlfriends is expecting a child; in Matthieu's experience, as soon as a Thomas has ensured the continuance of the line, his luck runs out and tragedy strikes.

It's beginning to get to Matthieu --- all these young men dead while he remains perfectly preserved in his early 50s, almost as if the years his young relatives gave up were transferred to him. He is curiously blasé about his protracted life, expressing very little curiosity concerning how or why he's reached his miraculous age. But he wonders what would happen if, instead of passively standing by as Tommy tries to destroy himself, he tried to save Tommy.

Matthieu spares no effort. After a sensational drug overdose destroys the actor's career, Matthieu gets him a job and arranges drug treatment, ensuring that Tommy DuMarqué is the first of his charges to live to see the birth of their child.

As long as the reader does not ask too many questions --- such as why Matthieu is "the thief of time" when he has no control over his own years and isn't really stealing anything --- this is an entertaining foray through the years, told with style and wit.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating historical fantasy, March 11, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Thief of Time (Hardcover)

In 1999, Matthieu Zela turned two hundred and fifty six years old though anyone seeing him would guess he is in his late forties. Matthieu has never understood why he simply stopped aging back in the late eighteenth century, but he has outlived nine generations of descendents of his late younger half-brother Tomas. That is not saying much since they all died in their twenties after siring a male offspring due to either insanity or events out of their control.

Currently he resides in London where he earns a nice living as a satellite TV businessman. He worries about his nephew of the moment Tommy, a soap opera star, because he expects the lad to die soon especially since the youngster is out of control with a nasty heroin habit that makes him this generation's dolt. However, Matthieu vows not this time will his nephew pass on..

This is a fascinating historical fantasy that is fun to follow though the TIME THIEF never decides between a gallop through major Western historical events of the last two and a half centuries like the French Revolution, etc or a current thriller to save the life of the nephew. Matthieu is an absorbing protagonist with his employment over the years being similar but modified to the era while he grieves his losses. However, one strike is that the audience never knows why he is immortal. Still overall this is a fine rapid dash through history.

Harriet Klausner