Dear Thief

by Samantha Harvey

I was enthralled with the last book I read by this author, The Wilderness, so I was looking foward to this book.

This woman is an incredible writer!!  This book apparently inspired by the Leonard Cohen song "Famous Blue Raincoat", is a letter, or series of letters that a woman is writing to a friend who has had a big and devastating role in her life. "You were going to work your way into my marriage and you were going to call its new three-way shape holy".  This even sounds like Leonard Cohen...

The story starts with the main character relating to being present around the time of her grandmother's death and finding some bones, probably from an animal along the river, she also meets a man there.

The woman's friend drifts into and out of her life, she is somewhat of a free spirit.  The woman's son calls the friend Butterfly because of a shawl she wears.  As the character writes the letter to her friend she is wondering where she is, she goes from interest to pain to anger.  At one point she says she imagines having killing her friend.  She is angry at the fact that her friend seduced her husband and seems to have captivated her son too.  The son is now off wandering in Europe perhaps based on some things butterfly told him.  The woman was devastated by the betrayal of her friend and husband. She and her husband separated but never divorced.  Now the husband is back asking her to marry him again. She doesn't seem to keen on the idea.  At the end of the book she looks out the window and thinks she might have seen her friend in the street but when she runs outside she cannot see her.  She tells her friend that if the friend wants her husband she can have him.

The story sounds simple but the emotional turmoil of the main character is developed/displayed in such an amazing way, we get little vignettes until the story builds to the end.

I am looking forward to re-reading it.