The Car Thief. - Hardcover

Weesner, Theodore.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394462785 ISBN 13: 9780394462783

Publisher: Random House, 1972

Hailed by The Boston Globe as "so poignant and beautifully written, so true and painful, that one can't read it without feeling the knife's cruel blade in the heart," The Car Thief was first published to enormous popularity, and sold over half a million copies. Alex Housman is a kid who at the age of sixteen has had fourteen cars, harbors many hurts, and seems to fade into his environment while raging inside. His father is an alcoholic, losing his grip on life even as he wants the best for his son. The Car Thief explores the love Alex and his father share, in a tremendously poignant story that is filled with unusual triumphs.

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About the Author:

THEODORE WEESNER, born in Flint, Michigan, is aptly described as a ''writers' writer'' by the larger literary community. His short works have been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post, the Atlantic, and Best American Short Stories. His novels -- including The True Detective, Winning the City, and Harbor Lights -- have been published to great critical acclaim in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper's, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Boston magazine, and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few. He lives and works in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Review:

''One of the great coming-of-age novels of the twentieth century . . . Ted Weesner's seminal novel demands a second look for its marvelously rendered young protagonist, the unforgettable Alex Housman; for its courage and wisdom and great good heart.'' --Jennifer Haigh, New York Times bestselling author

''Weesner's perfectly restrained and subtle exploration of the characters' painful and often difficult emotions caused me to have an intimate and emotional connection to a character and story of such a seemingly distant world. It taught me that even the most personal of stories can be universal and it is with this belief that I have adapted The Car Thief into what I hope will be a film that does some justice to the most beautiful novel that ever broke my heart.'' --Dara Van Dusen, filmmaker

''The Car Thief is a poignant and beautifully written novel, so true and so excruciatingly painful that one can't read it without feeling the knife's cruel blade in the heart.'' --Boston Globe

''A simply marvelous novel. Alex (the protagonist) emerges from it as a kind of blue-collar Holden Caulfield.'' --Kansas City Star

''A remarkable, gripping first novel.'' --Joyce Carol Oates

''Weesner lays out a subtle and complex case study of juvenile delinquency that wrenches the heart. The novel reminds me strongly of the poignant aimlessness of Truffaut's [film] The 400 Blows. Beneath its quiet surface, The Car Thief --like its protagonist-- possesses churning emotions that push up through the prose for resolution. Weesner is definitely a man to watch --and read.'' --Newsweek

What The Car Thief is really concerned with emerges between its realistic lines slowly, delicately, with consummate art. Perhaps Mr. Weesner himself put it best: 'In my work, I guess I wish for nothing so much as to get close enough to things to feel their heart and warmth and pain, and in that way appreciate them a little more.' Judging from this book, his wish has been fulfilled...and then some. --New York Times

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