“The most must-read of all must-reads.” —Marie Claire“A kickass debut from start to finish.” —Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground RailroadLee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run. Betrayed by her family after taking the fall for a friend, Lee finds refuge in a cooperative of runaways holed up in an abandoned building they call the Crystal Castle. But the façade of the Castle … abandoned building they call the Crystal Castle. But the façade of the Castle conceals a far more sinister agenda, one hatched by a society of fanatical men set on decoding a series of powerful secrets hidden in plain sight. And they believe Lee holds the key to it all.
Aided by Tomi, a young hacker and artist with whom she has struck a wary alliance, Lee escapes into the unmapped corners of the city—empty aquariums, deserted motels, patrolled museums, and even the homes of vacationing families. But the deeper she goes underground, the more tightly she finds herself bound in the strange web she’s trying to elude. Desperate and out of options, Lee steps from the shadows to face who is after her—and why.
A novel of puzzles, conspiracies, secret societies, urban exploration, art history, and a singular, indomitable heroine, The Readymade Thief heralds the arrival of a spellbinding and original new talent in fiction.
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In his highly addictive and multi-faceted first novel, Augustus Rose pits an irrepressible and gritty young heroine against a sinister group of fanatics. The Readymade Thief is a kickass debut from start to finish.
The Readymade Thief is my favorite kind of book: an improbable one. The novel is a map of things—urban exploration, secret societies, the city of Philadelphia, Marcel Duchamp, very possibly the Home Alone movies—and if those things don’t seem to fit together, well, that’s the magic of the improbable book, and the transmutation of obsessions, by energy and intellect, into something wholly new: a novel that’s unexpected, uncategorizable, unputdownable.
Superbly written. Quite difficult to classify, I settle on science fiction.
I fell more than a little bit in love not just with Lee—the gutsy protagonist of Augustus Rose’s gorgeous debut novel, The Readymade Thief—but with the book itself. It’s a hypnotizing amalgamation of love story and mystery. I am in awe.
The Readymade Thief is a brilliant, suspenseful, and cinematic novel with an unforgettable heroine and a big story about art, the nature of consciousness, and all points in between. Be prepared to lose yourself in it.
In The Readymade Thief, Augustus Rose shows that he has one of the steadiest hands in fiction. How else to explain how effortlessly he complicates and expands the mystery at the heart of the novel, adding Marcel Duchamp, the Darknet, Urban Exploration, and a unified field theory along the way to such amazing effect. Each time I thought I had found my way to solid ground, another level opened up, and I eagerly tunneled deeper. Rose has crafted something memorable, crackling with energy, a truly wonderful tale.
I was very intrigued by the prologue, but unfortunately after that, the book didn’t hold up. The beginning is slow-going. The plot/mystery was potentially interesting, but I couldn’t appreciate it for the unfocused writing. Descriptions were too long and clunky. Very often the emotions of the characters didn’t feel earned. Minor characters came in and out of the plot too conveniently. Plot “twists” weren’t inevitable surprises, but rather left me feeling a combination of “bullshit!” and “bwha?”
“The Readymade Thief” is a new rendition of “Alice in Wonderland.” As befitting a modern personification for both tales Lee Cuddy is a young woman of seventeen years. Her adventures through the looking glass, in today’s barely distorted Philadelphia, are harrowing, vivid and wild. In this landscape of urban decay and drug fired rage events she finds herself pursued by a sinister organization known as ‘Societe Anonyme” for reasons she cannot fathom. This gang is peopled with devotees of Marcel Duchamp, artist, alchemist, scientist, and joker. His masterwork, “ The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors,” is the altar at which these men worship. They go so far as to go about dressed in early Twentieth Century garb pretending to be the bachelors of the piece: The Station Master, The Priest, The Flunky, The Clown and others. They are further enraged when in escaping their clutches the first time Lee steals a piece of Duchamp’s art. An audacious act which only serves to intensify “S. A.’s” efforts to lay hands on her.
The scaffold on which the story rests is Duchamp, his art, and references to it. If you do any research at all, you will find it everywhere: very labyrinthine indeed. The interstices are filled with well-developed characters, believable dialog, riveting scene descriptions and exceptional storytelling. But it is Lee, with her heart, her deviousness, loyalty, bravery, despair and vengefulness that makes the story sing.
Congratulations to the author, Augustus Rose. He has written a story that brings to light one of the most influential artists of the last century and managed to make the story fast paced and enjoyable in the bargain. I highly recommend “The Readymade Thief” to you.
Viking, Penguin Random House, and http://www.firsttoread.com provided an advance copy of this novel for review.