Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2017
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Eighties New York springs to gritty, vibrant life in this piercingly romantic and compulsively readable coming-of-age novel. A beautiful, sad, funny, altogether bewitching debut.
Francesca "Chess" Varani is an ultra-bright, sassy, but vulnerable Barnard freshwoman from a blue-collar background in the vibrantly gritty New York City of the mid-eighties. She strikes up a volatile and somewhat toxic friendship with drama-queen classmate Kendra Marr-Löwenstein, and falls into the bewitching orbit of her Salingeresque, high-toned family. Upon graduation, she moves into the Marr-Löwenstein house in the West Village as a secretary/girl-of-all-work to the soignèe literary intellectual Clarice Marr (think Susan Sontag but blondly coiffed and dressed in Chanel) and receives the sentimental education and emotional roughing up New York bestows on all of its new arrivals—including a love affair with Clarice's glamorously damaged son, Jerry.The story is related by Chess in sadder but wiser fashion from the distance of a financially beset 2008 and the depths of a crap job taken of necessity, tinged with the poignancy of time and choices made and not made.
"Firmani really captures the grit and promise of 1980s New York, with too many cigarettes and dingy punk shows, when it was both unusual and magical for kids to come...for school... A leisurely exploration of character and place that, when you connect to Chess, packs a wallop." - Booklist
"Firmani's debut novel is a nostalgic paean to 1980s New York and a compelling story of youthful infatuation, love, and disillusionment." - Library Journal
"When all is said and done, one's love/hate relationship with this book leans to the side of love." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Time's a Thief was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
B.G. Firmani is a graduate of Barnard and Brown. Her short fiction has been published in Bomb, Kenyon Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She lives in New York City, has a day job, and writes on the weekends.
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