In Dear Thief, Samantha Harvey (The Wilderness) examines the human need for relationships despite the potential for loss. The unnamed narrator sits down at her desk in December 2001 to begin a letter she will write, in fits and starts, for half a year. She pours the pain and poison of her deepest thoughts out onto the page, simultaneously trying to summon and exorcise her treacherous, long-lost best friend, Nina.
Glamorous, charismatic and selfish, Nina moved in with the narrator, enchanted her infant son, and began a love affair with her husband that ended the marriage. Then she disappeared, silently. It has been 18 years, and the narrator has no idea where Nina is, so she can't mail the letter. Knowing the intended recipient will never read it, the narrator also imagines a life for her, scenes in which Nina reads the epistle and defends her actions, or waves off the narrator's accusations with an amoral hand.
While the love triangle premise seems the perfect setup for melodrama, Harvey never veers into the realm of histrionics. She carefully restricts the narrator's voice to a wry, witty clip that occasionally hints at the fury and grief still smoldering beneath the surface. Without outlining a single tantrum, Harvey still manages to convey the narrator's full range of emotions: the sting of betrayal, the philosophical musings of middle age and a continuing loneliness.
Harvey's engrossing missive may leave readers longing to put pen to paper and resurrect the lost art of handwritten letters--though one hopes to have fewer grievances than Nina's betrayed friend. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads