Customer Reviews

Thief of Words

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Twenty years ago, Annie Hollerman was an up-and-coming reporter, madly in love with an equally promising colleague. When one lapse of judgment caused her perfect world to come crashing down around her, Annie's dreams were shattered, and although she's since made a name for herself as a literary agent, she's had enough bad experiences with men to leave her just a bit wary of relationships - and the last person she would ever want to date would be a journalist. It's against her better judgment that she lets her best friend set her up with newspaper editor Jack DePaul, but to her astonishment, sparks fly. Both Jack and Annie are gifted writers with a passion for language, and their relationship develops as much through their long, witty, poetic e-mails as through their face-to-face meetings. When Annie opens up to Jack about some of her regrets, he literally rewrites the story of her life, with himself as one of the main characters. Annie struggles to open herself to Jack about the darkest corner of her history, but it might in fact be the shadows of HIS past that threaten to come between them in the end.

I should disclose that my approach to "Thief of Words" may be colored by a certain lack of objectivity. I have spent the last four weeks falling marvelously, splendiferously, head-over-heels in love, and through this giddy haze of joy I find it nearly impossible to see much fault in anything at all, let alone a love story. Moreover, my beloved and I are both writers, and, living some distance from each other, much of the development of our relationship has taken place online, through our words. And I too was once a promising young thing with a bright future ahead of her, only to see all her plans go awry. I couldn't help but see myself, and my own happiness, on every page of this novel.

Yes, I'm biased. But I'm not so high on my own oxytocin and endorphins that I don't recognize an excellent novel when I read one - and "Thief of Words" is one of the finest I've read all year. "John Jaffe" is the pseudonym for husband/wife team John Muncie (a newspaper editor) and Jody Jaffe (a novelist), and this novel is a fictionalized account of their own love story, which perhaps accounts for its genuine sweetness and passion (I can't remember when I last read a work of fiction that captured so perfectly the experience of mature people falling in love), and certainly accounts for its elegance, wit, and insider's view of the world of journalism and the book business. The blossoming romance between the two thoroughly likable, warmly relatable protagonists gives the story its heart, but it's Jack and Annie's haunting, literate e-mails that imbue it with a soul. Fans of Nicholas Sparks and the like will find this novel sweetly rewarding, while anyone who's ever had a love affair with the written word will find it as scrumptious as a box of chocolates.

I picked this up on a rec from a friend, but somehow it got shuffled to the bottom of the pile and sat for a while. My book-fu must have been taking a day off, because I should have sat down and started reading the second I got it! Fabulous story, loved loved loved it. :)

I had a very hard time with this book but over the summer I was able to finish and it was well worth the effert.

I loved this book. It's funny and sweet and well written. I'm going to give it to my boyfriend -- so he'll start writing me the kinds of emails Jack wrote Annie.