At first glance, this book looks like a collection of short stories, but it is a novel that pulls everything together, from humble beginnings, to double-challenges for our two heroes. That’s the strong tension that pulls the whole story together—will they be heroes? What will they choose? Will they stay true to each other?
It all begins when twin boys are born to a poor cobbler and his wife.
“We don’t have any money for christening gifts,” said their parents, “but we’ll still give them something. They shall each have a puppy, a kitten and a pigeon. Don’t we make a lovely family?”
A warm and surprisingly twisty tale! ( )

You know when you buy a book and mean to read it, and keep meaning to read it, but never quite get round to it, and then it’s adapted for TV and you realise that you’ve missed the moment, and that now whenever you read it people will assume you’ve only read it because you’d seen it on Netflix? Yep. That’s happened to me with Tonke Dragt’s story The Letter for the King, so I was keen to get ahead with her novel The Goldsmith and the Master Thief. I should emphasise that this is a children’s story and it’s written as such: there are no winks or extra layers of meaning aimed at adults, just a good old-fashioned fable which follows the adventures of two very different (and yet very similar) brothers. Cynics need not apply: in this world, duplicity is always punished, the misguided mend their ways, and the pure of heart are always rewarded. Reading it feels like a deliciously self-indulgent step back in time, to the days when life was simpler...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/05/02/the-goldsmith-and-the-master-thief-1961-tonk... ( )